More Food for Health

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More Food for Health

Congo (Kinshasa)
Project Stage:
Idea
Budget: 
$1,000 - $10,000
Website:
http://www.cultureofwisdom.webs.com
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Project Summary
Elevator Pitch

Concise Summary: Help us pitch this solution! Provide an explanation within 3-4 short sentences.

MFH is an organization that gives people confidence in their ability to organize their own programs intended for combating disease.

About Project

Problem: What problem is this project trying to address?

The production and the consumption of more food in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) participate in the building up of excellent health of the population, considering the prevalence of kwashiorkor among children and deficiency of physical strength among adults. The two major problems for this are: shortage of food in many households and lack of the knowledge of food values by the population.

Solution: What is the proposed solution? Please be specific!

The solution refers to the paticipation of decision-makers, civil society, the private sector, and the population, who must be mobilized to accept responsibility for their part to improve the quality of health care and to increase the access to adequate nutrition for all. The solution includes the following combination: to help people scrupulously respect the hygiene rules and to support people to massively produce the food they consume and adequately consume the food they produce and encourage each one of them to acquire the knowledge about the composition and nutritive values of food in order to make each person aware of the importance of a balanced daily diet so as to strengthen his capacity of the immunity of the body before diseases arise.
Impact: How does it Work

Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.

Our model is unique: we do not prescribe medicaments so that people may achieve good health; on the contrary, we teach people how to store up health by growing and eating more food. We hope that, if fifteen enthusiasts each teach ten others every year, and each one taught in turn does the same, the initial fifteen will influence the outlook and practice of 15 million in no more than seven years. The activities to implement during this initial term are: --Campaign of information and sensitization on hygiene and diet; --Putting in place the structure of "health pioneers" in every targeted village. The interventions for this intermediate term include the hiring of an expert on agricultural field. The long term activities aim at forming the cooperative movement made up of the farmers. Lessons in child care, cookery, agriculture and nutrition for each targeted locality where all crops of demonstration plots are prepared and tasted to encourage village-agriculturists to grow them themselves. . The project translates and distributes to people concerned "a guide on adequate daily diet for the family" into local language in order to familiarize village-dwellers with the planning of good nutrition.
Sustainability

Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?

Armed with several data points, I was greatly interested in the history of underdeveloped Britain that shows that what changed the health of the British people from the year 1700 on were the production and the consumption of more food. That is what justifies the necessity of the production and consumption of adequate daily diet for families in the DRC permitting the bodies of Congolese citzens to manufacture the antibodies and then to stand strong against infections. As this innovation is still in pilot stage in the DRC, I seize this opportunity to inform other changemakers of my desire to network with peers who are working to address similar needs.
Team

Founding Story

When I lived in College in 2000, one day, my roommate Nicholas asked: Where will we find food? To that question my proposal was: We have to plough a garden in the compound of the boarding school where we will produce crops which are good for food. We got a piece of land where we grew vegetables. And with the crops reaped from the garden, we ate better meals and that contributed to the improvement of our life conditions. And this experience was the first spark that kindled a flaming desire for me to form MFH in 2010.
About You
Organization:
More Food for Health (MFH)
About You
First Name

Wabula

Last Name

Pierre

About Your Organization
Organization Name

More Food for Health (MFH)

Organization Country

, NK

Country where this project is creating social impact

, NK

How long has your organization been operating?

Less than a year

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Innovation
How long have you been in operation?

Still in idea phase, but looking to launch soon

Which of the following best describes the barrier(s) your innovation addresses? Choose up to two

Access, Cost.

Social Impact
Please describe the goal of your initiative; outline what you are trying to achieve

Specific objectives of More Food for Health are to motivate young people to engage in tasks as working the soil and raising varieties of livestocks and dissiminating the practice of hygiene, to give knowledge to young trainers who in turn are sent to train village agriculturists how to maintain the soil in a healthy state and how to multiply the produce of agriculture into a surplus for massive consumption and trade, and to organize village agriculturists into cooperatives.

What has been the impact of your solution to date?

My solution was the promotion of the work of gardening at school. Many students at the boarding school were interested in hoeing the field in the school compound, so all unused land at school was planted with food to replace those foods that students used to buy in the market. As students got satisfaction from what they were then obtaining out of their gardens, they formed a structure called Club for Student Farmers with the aim of increasing the produce of garden work at school.

What is your projected impact over the next five years?

I will work hard to increase the knowledge and intelligence and responsibility of persons whose health is at risk because of malnutrition and lack of hygiene. This will consist in helping people to carry out new ideas regarding the production and the consumption of more food, the respect of the rules of hygiene and the promotion of common planning and effort of the people involved in farming and in all aspects of health care at village level: with the ambition of forming a big cooperative society made up of farmers in rural areas.

What barriers might hinder the success of your project? How do you plan to overcome them?

Two hindrances for the success of the present innovation have been observed. They are: the cost of imported seeds, fertilizer, farm equipment, transport, and the difficult access to penetrate the dense rainforests of the Balega people. To overcome both obstacles, I have initiated campaign of communication toward people concerned showing that the responsibility to develop themselves as well as their territory belongs to them. By this, people must accept to take a full share in what is done in their area for the promotion of health care.

Winning entries present a strong plan for how they will achieve and track growth. Identify your six-month milestone for growing your impact

--It is important to notice the order of tasks in this innovation. The initial and intermediate terms tasks include:

Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your six-month milestone
Task 1

Choosing 5 areas where we must work on the basis of needs.

Task 2

Awakening in people the real meaning of man’s good health and showing what limits man’s achievement of good health.

Task 3

Selection of the first team members of the non-medical services of health.

Now think bigger! Identify your 12-month impact milestone

--The tasks for the long term period are:

Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your 12-month milestone
Task 1

Training course for local health pioneers.

Task 2

Translation and distribution of the literature on the guidance of daily diet.

Task 3

Searching new varieties of seeds and animals and showing people how to get more food out of the soil.

Sustainability
Tell us about your partnerships

To help the integration of all the segments of a community, MFH partners with Churches, Leaders, the elite of community, and Families, who are drawn into the planning, the implementation and the evaluation of all the programs intended to improve the welfare of village-dwellers. Again, just as an aircraft needs a long runway before it can become airborne, so this project needs also help and other partners from other countries in order to achieve its goals.

Are you currently targeting other specific populations, locations, or markets for your innovation? If so, where and why?

This pilot innovation is currently targeting the Balega people in the east of the DRC, whose challeges of health care are more critical because medicaments and animal proteins, for example, are often out of reach for this poor community.

What type of operating environment and internal organizational factors make your innovation successful?

The key factors for the success of this innovation are: Integration and Collaboration. Integration ensures that this project is based on the local resources which are available. Collaboration ensures that the employees of this innovation are working well with other organizations and people outside MFH. The reason for this is that community problems originate from a variety of inter-related causes. Cnsenquently, the solution must be wholistic. For example, health problems may be caused by food problem which may be caused by worldview.

Please elaborate on any needs or offers you have mentioned above and/or suggest categories of support that aren't specified within the list

The sole support that is not specified within the list of needs I have mentioned above is the web-site production which can enable real time information sharing between MFH and organizations working in food security and hygiene.