Project Peanut Butter

Mmmm... Peanut Butter!

Buckle up.  This intro is convoluted, but I swear I’ll get to the point.

A friend of mine recently came back to the US from a two year stint in the Peace Corps.  She was based in Namibia, Africa.  She’s a professional photographer and brought back beautiful photos and sad realities.  Within five days she was looking up prices for airfare to return to Namibia.  Everything here was suddenly so loud.  People were moving so fast.  And wasting so much.  Money, potential, time.  She NEEDED to go back to where she could do good.  Fortunately for us, she found a compromise.  She quickly developed some programs here to generate funds for the programs she started in Namibia to keep her projects running.  What does Coco have to do with Project Peanut Butter?  Nothing.  I told you this was convoluted.  So here’s my …. k, I haven’t come up with a smooth segue…  Trust me here, it’ll come around to the point.

Here’s what happened:  I signed up for Twitter yesterday (I know, in web years I’m a dinosaur… a slow moving tiny brained dinosaur) and today I checked in on the webs and blogs of some of the people I selected to “follow”.  Doesn’t this seem like stalking?  Warm fuzzy stalking, but still stalking… different subject for a different day.

Anyhow, I check out 3 or 4 mildly interesting links and I find Sarah. Her blog’s latest article is on the way 2 sisters (Sarah and her sister Bekah) relate to each other now due to their conditioning as children.  Cute, funny, so very true.  Which caused me to scroll down for another post by her. The words “Prisoner of Azkastan Azkaban” sent me into immediate rapid scroll mode (I’ll admit to liking the movies but you can’t make me read a blog post about Harry) when I saw the link for Peanut Butter Project.  Of course I had to click.  I love Peanut Butter!

The Value of a Great Project Name

The name of the link got me there. Peanut Butter Project.  Harmless sounding link.  It didn’t scare me, it didn’t sound like work or responsibility.  It didn’t ask anything of me.  In fact, it replaced my usually click resistant personality with youthful – and munchie craving- curiosity (I still got some youthful left!  Srsly!!)  It worked like a charm.  I hovered over the link, wondering, what will it be?  Will it be recipes or games or a social network?  Here’s the entirety of Sarah’s mention of the project in her post:

1. Purchase one serving of plumpy’nut a week through the American-based group Project Peanut Butter.
2. Contact Project Peanut Butter directly and offer personal assistance.
3. Coordinate a Baked-Goods Buffet at Comedy Central, Sarah’s place of work, with all proceeds going to Project Peanut Butter.

No clues here.  Okay a little clue.  It was something that was going to be helpful to someone.  So I clicked.

I have to admit, the site’s first photo and the headline put me off.  I recoiled. I feel actual physical pain at the thought of all of these people in need.  But I stayed.  The question “why Peanut Butter?” overcame any initial hesitation.  Also, I wondered if this might be something to call to the attention of my friend Coco.  I’m glad I stayed.

What is Project Peanut Butter?

Project Peanut Butter is a therapeutic feeding program for malnourished children in Malawi and Sierra Leone, on the continent of Africa. It was founded by Professor Mark Manary, M.D., a pediatrician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and a professor of pediatric medicine at Washington University School of Medicine.  For years, malnutrition has been addressed with a milk based formula which gave patients a 25-40% survival rate.  the treatment also required the patients to be hospitalized.  Dr. Manary developed a peanut/dairy/vitamin/mineral food that offers a 95% recovery rate for severely malnourished children and is administered in the home.

So call me a cynic, but I’ve known enough people who were bamboozled by scams that came attached to third world based non-profits that I went into verification mode.  Googling the doctor (yes I did, see the link above to his hospital’s directory listing), the product (RUTF which stands for Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food) and checking it out on Guidestar.org (free to become a member, useful for checking out non-profits before you donate).  Last year, this Missouri based non-profit provided nutrition to over 10,000 people in Africa through direct services and sold 100,000 units to the United Nations AT COST, all on a budget of less than $200,000.  WTF???  Our government programs can’t take a shit in another country for less than a million.

This year their goals are to reach 2/3 of Malawi’s children and launch the program in Sierra Leone, the country with the worst child mortality rate for children under five, at 28%. Their babies have a slightly higher chance of 1 in 4 births resulting in death during childhood. One in four, people!

Road Map

Get your freaking credit card out.  Now. And get ready to email this information to EVERYONE in your email address book with your strong recommendation to donate.  If you do not regularly contribute money to non-profits (and I don’t.  I give lots of time) this is the time to start.  I did.  And if you do, add this one to your list right now.  Seriously.

$15.00 (USD)  – that’s fifteen – will provide all the food ingredients to provide a malnourished child with Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) for the duration of treatment.  Until the baby is better.  Save a child.  A family.  Fuck, if you can afford it, save a village.

Guidestar, in association with Network for Good, provides a way for you to make a secure donation here.  You choose the amount and whether it is a one time donation or a monthly, quarterly or annual contribution.  You can donate anonymously or you can provide your information (I assume to receive updates or a thank you.)  Either way, you receive a receipt which is good for a 100% tax deduction.  And you can donate in the name of someone else to honor friends or family members.

Oh and here’s something I learned in grade school: George Washington Carver, the son of slaves, developed 285 uses for peanuts, 105 edible.  I think the list of uses just grew.  Good job Dr. Manary.  Good job.

Please pass this information to everyone you know.