Photo Journal
World Soy Foundation Board Member, Natural Products, Inc, donated a container of soy flour to the World Soy Foundation to support the Nutrition and Education International Inc.’s (NEI) humanitarian work in Afghanistan.
NEI uses soy flour to feed refugees and many others in Afghanistan, a country that has some of the worst health statistics in the world. According to UNICEF, more than half of all children under 5 years of age suffer from moderate or severe stunting.
The Caroline Chauveau Girls School has approximately 320 students who have been receiving a soy-enhanced mid-day meal, through a NSRL program, since November, 2009. The textured soy protein has been included in existing school lunch items and has been well accepted by the students and school cooks, thanks to work done by NSRL and the WISHH Program.
The WSF, WISHH, and NSRL have developed a microenterprise business model that provides safe and nutritious soy protein rich beverages to the local community.
Part of the project will ensure that soy milk and foods are donated to local institutions feeding the hungry. Part of the output will be sold to the local community to drive small scale employment and low cost nutrition.
Ongoing support will be provided to these fledgling entrepreneurs to ensure long term success and access to low cost, highly nutritious and locally processed products.
The World Soy Foundation was awarded $50,000 by The Monsanto Fund to pilot the use of SoyCow Processing Technology to improve nutrtion for a settlement at Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, in South Africa. The WSF collaborated with Partnerships for Children (INMED) and Joint Aid Management (JAM) in this project.
The project helped a group of unemployed, young people to start their own small business in the community. 
The business, named Nambitha Nutritional Products, was based around the SoyCow, which converts soya beans into edible products, such as soymilk, soy yogurt and tofu. The group received training on how to use and maintain the machine and introduced a number of additional products that can be produced with the SoyCow.
Nambitha was officially launched on November 28, 2008 with community leaders and stakeholders present to introduce the business to the community. It is the hope that Nambitha will ultimately create sustainable solutions to the protein needs of the people who need it.
Rotary International donated SoyCow machines to charitable organizations within Guatemala. One of the recipients was a hospital in Antigua, Guatemala. The SoyCow will provide nutritional aid to the 230 resident patients and nourishment to the 100,000 needy people the facility helps annually. These patients range in age; some are severly handicapped, have been abandoned or come from extremely poor families. The top photo shows National Soybean Research Laboratory (NSRL) technician Danny Erickson along with the hospital staff.
Hospital staff are shown pouring soybeans into the SowCow in the lower photo. The SoyCow machine has the potential to produce 40 liters of soymilk per hour. The soybeans for this SoyCow installation were donated by Cargill.
With a generous gift from WhiteWave, the World Soy Foundation, in collaboration with Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) implemented a school feeding program in Ghana, Africa. The participants of this project were parents' organizations in two schools that built kitchens and the 300 school children who were fed a lunch including soy for 120 school days as part of a school lunch program.
In a new phase of this WhiteWave funded project, the WSF will purchase a VitaGoat processing machine and provide training for ADRA staff, school cooks and community leaders on how to use soy and soymilk byproducts to improve diets with protein. This will achieve several objectives: provide school children with badly needed protein, provide Ghanaian soybean farmers with a ready market for their crop and support development of an income generating activity for the local community.
Seven female farmer-leaders took a 12-day trip to Africa on a mission to build relationships with African women who are agricultural leaders in their countries. The U.S. farmer leaders can work in conjunction with women farmers in Africa to fill the protein deficits in their diets. They spoke to African community leaders about the benefits of SoyCow and VitaGoat processing technologies. There is great opportunity in Africa for soy processing-related businesses.
