A mother feeds her child MANA RUTF in Rwaza, Rwanda.

Photograph: Silent Images 

…How would you spend it? How could you get the most bang for your buck if your goal was to advance human welfare over four years?

Bjørn Lomborg, Danish author, academic, and environmental writer, posed this question to a panel of five top economists, including four Nobel laureates, in the Copenhagen Consensus 2012 project. The panelists found 16 investments to be most worthy of this budget (in descending desirability):

1. Bundled interventions to reduce undernutrition in preschoolers (to fight hunger and improve education)
2. Expanding the subsidy for malaria combination treatment
3. Expanded childhood immunization coverage
4. Deworming of schoolchildren, to improve educational and health outcomes
5. Expanding tuberculosis treatment
6. R&D to increase yield enhancements, to decrease hunger, fight biodiversity destruction, and lessen the effects of climate change
7. Investing in effective early warning systems to protect populations against natural disaster
8. Strengthening surgical capacity
9. Hepatitis B immunization
10. Using low‐cost drugs in the case of acute heart attacks in poorer nations (these are already available in developed countries)
11. Salt reduction campaign to reduce chronic disease
12. Geoengineering R&D into the feasibility of solar radiation management
13. Conditional Cash Transfers for School Attendance
14. Accelerated HIV Vaccine R&D
15. Extended field trial of information campaigns on the benefits of schooling
16. Borehole and public hand-pump intervention

Of course, the team at MANA was thrilled to read that the team found stepping up the fight against malnutrition to be the most valuable investment. Investments in malnutrition intervention programs lead to faster growth in children’s bodies and muscles, improved cognitive ability, and better performance in schools. Lomborg explains that “studies show that, decades down the line, these children would be more productive, make more money, have fewer kids, and begin a virtuous circle of dramatic development.”

Now that’s a smart investment.

Read Lomborg’s article in Slate Magazine, here.

A severely malnourished child is fed a 

ready-to-use-therapeutic food by his mother.

ACF-Nigeria, E.A. Menafudi

Action Against Hunger | ACF International, a global humanitarian organization committed to ending world hunger, accurately assessed Nigeria as a “land of significant dichotomy.” The country boasts the second largest economy in Africa, supplies the US with 20% of its oil, and is expected to have the highest average GDP growth rate in the world over the next 40 years. The children of Nigeria tell a different story. There are more than one million Nigerian children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

In 2010, Action Against Hunger became one of four international NGOs to set up office in Nigeria. Over the next year, ACF provided lifesaving treatment (including RUTF) for 12,000 victims of SAM, trained over 1,000 community volunteers and 200 health workers, and supported 36 health centers in northern Nigeria, the most distressed area of the country. ACF has plans to double this reach in 2012, and will ultimately be supporting 70 health centers in Nigeria.

As high rates of waterborne diseases are heavily correlated with high rates of SAM, ACF plans to diversify its programs by working to provide clean water, good sanitation, and community outreach on hygiene practices. ACF is also conducting food security and livelihood assessments to determine the causes of SAM in northeastern Nigeria. By better understanding the struggles of Nigerians, ACF will be better prepared to work towards closing the gap between Nigeria’s growing economy and its suffering children.

Read more about ACF’s amazing work in Nigeria and elsewhere, here.

Roger Thurow, Senior Fellow, Global Agricultural Development Initiative, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Global Food for Thought Blog, May 11 

For many Moms, their biggest wish on Mother’s Day is to hear those special three little words from their children: I Love You. For the mothers and women farmers of Africa, they also dearly wish to hear three little letters: A-N-D. And.  It’s a tiny word, perhaps the most common of all conjunctions.  But in rural Africa, it is so often missing from the ambitions of mothers. It is the goal of mothers everywhere to provide their children with proper daily nourishment and to educate them as best as possible.

Read the full article, here.

In Niger, a Problem for Parents: How to Feed Their Children

Opinion, Lane Hartill, The Huffington Post, May 11 

President Obama and world leaders will debate the issues of our time: Syria, Iran, Afghanistan. But there’s another issue on the agenda, one that deserves a deeper think: food security. Leaders will talk about growing more food and funding agriculture around the world. These are noble goals. But growing more food isn’t enough if kids aren’t eating the right things. G8 leaders must commit to a specific nutrition goal to help the malnourished children around the world.

Read the full article, here.

Extreme Hunger in East Africa and the Sahel: Forewarned but Not Forearmed

Opinion, Andrew Wander, Guardian, May 9 

Aid agencies, humanitarian donors and UN agencies all need to change the way they work to tackle the problem. The humanitarian system is like an ambulance – it is focused on disaster response, not prevention. It is geared up to react to demonstrable need. The point of hunger early warnings is that when they sound the alarm, the needs do not yet exist. They are projections.

Read the full article, here.

All articles are from Global Food for Thought. 

We believe that it is a universal truth that mothers love their children. However, we know that for some mothers around the world, the journey of motherhood is more difficult. Save the Children has released their 13th annual State of the World’s Mothers Report, featuring an index ranking the best and worst countries in which to be a mother. The rankings were determined by criteria such as mother and child health, educational attainment, and economic status.

The report focuses on how well 165 countries are providing nutrition during the most critical first 1,000 days of a child’s life. It reveals that over half of the world’s children do not have access to what Save the Children calls the “lifesaving six”: iron folate supplementation during pregnancy, breastfeeding, complementary feeding, Vitamin A supplementation, Zinc for treatment of diarrhea, and water, sanitation and hygiene.

Read Save the Children’s full report, here, to learn how the “lifesaving six” are affordable solutions, even in the world’s poorest countries.

Infographic via Save the Children.

As famine devastates nations around the globe, we’re constantly thinking about what can be done about it. While MANA can produce RUTF for victims of famine, it’s important to get our product into kids’ hands before it’s too late. That’s why we like FEWS NET. FEWS NET, Famine Early Warning Systems Network, is an activity funded by USAID that works with international, regional and national partners to provide early warning and vulnerability information on food security issues for 25 countries.

FEWS NET provides decision makers with all of the information that they need to make important and expensive choices about when and where lifesaving response is delivered. The network is evidence-based, measuring factors such as the amount and vigor of vegetation and the state of rainfall. FEWS NET also conducts livelihoods analysis to determine how and why households survive difficult times, such as famine.

Read more about this lifesaving network, here, and watch a video from USAID, here.

MANA partners with Wiregrass Georgia Tech through Quickstart Program to train 15 students to become factory employees.

See the WALB News 10 clip, here, featuring factory manager, Loris Jarvis!

Meet Ashley Patrick: a middle schooler with a huge heart. Upon hearing about MANA’s mission, Ashley organized a fundraiser to help us out. Along with her fellow Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) “huddle leaders,” Ashley started “In Tune to Spreading the Love” at Southeast Bulloch Middle School in Brooklet, GA. For two weeks, the huddle leaders stood in the school commons and collected donations from the student body. When a student made a donation, he or she received a handful of Hershey Hugs & Kisses and a chance to win an iTunes gift card. The students raised approximately $200!

Ashley’s heart for this project grew and she continued to tell her friends and family about MANA. She single handedly raised $600! The MANA Crew extends a huge “thank you” to Ashley Patrick and her classmates for their amazing generosity!

Here at MANA, we believe that there’s not a lot better than good food and helping people out. This past weekend, a MANA team member, Luke, and his dad put together a pop-up restaurant along with their favorite coffee shop, Kaffa, to benefit MANA and serve up some good ol’ fashioned BBQ to the people of Orange, CA.

Luke’s son helped out, too! The MANA crew is so grateful for the hard work of three generations of Mysse men!

In case you’ve been living in a cave, here’s the skinny on Jeremy Lin. He is the undrafted, underestimated, twice rejected, point guard who has led the hapless, star studded, injury laden New York Knicks to victory after victory for nearly two weeks now. He scored more points than any basketball player in history in his first four NBA starts, and 20 or more points in each of his first six games — a remarkable achievement.

It turns out he owes it all to his mother, what she ate, and what she fed him as a child. Read the entire Huffington Post article, here!

Photograph from US Magazine

“I’m not concerned about the very poor,” is sure to dog Romney throughout the campaign. But as he continues to explain what he meant, I hope he takes the opportunity to think about the “very poor.” And I hope he is concerned. We all should be.”

Read the whole Huffington Post article by our CEO, Mark Moore, here!