What Gives

Main menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Archives
  • me
  • Press
    • What Gives 365 Media Appearances
  • contact

Tag Archives: Harvard University Pitch for Change

Post navigation

“We won’t stop until we get food on the table for everyone in Mali.”

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Betty Londergan

2

Mali is one of those quiet countries you don’t hear a lot about. A landlocked country in western Africa, it’s about twice the size of Texas and one of the poorest countries in the world. Home to the fabulous ancient cities of Timbuktu and Djenne, Mali has 13 million people, 50% of them under the age of 18. It has been a successful democracy for twenty years, yet 67% of its people are suffering from malnutrition and 30% live below the poverty line.

Malian child in Samanko

Those statistics are simply unacceptable to the Niang brothers, whose family roots are in Mali. “Mali has a rich, vibrant culture and plenty of natural resources,” says Mohamed Ali Niang, 21, now finishing his degree in the Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia. “But everywhere you look, you see people who are poor, desperate, and have to struggle daily for the most basic human right – simply having food to eat.”

2.7 billion people in the world depend on rice for life.

Their solution: Malo Traders www.malotraders.com a not-just-for-profit social/business venture that improves post-harvest losses by partnering with farmers to improve, protect, process, package, store, label and market rice– one of Mali’s largest staple crops. Today, Malian farmers lose $20 million of their rice crop in post-harvest losses because they don’t have storage facilities and processing available to them.

Rice farmers under the baobab tree

Malo Traders plans to help Malian rice farmers both grow more nutritious rice– and protect and retain at least 10% more of their crop, thereby boosting income and alleviating hunger. Today, Malo Traders is exchanging ideas with PATH in Washington state on how to bring Ultra Rice, a strain enriched with iron, zinc and Vitamin A, to Africa to combat the anemia that afflicts over 60% of Mali’s people. Their business plan also includes building processing plants to clean, polish and package farmers’ rice before it rots in the fields or is sold at a loss to opportunistic middlemen.

Mohamed Ali Niang

Malo Traders’s ultimate goal is provide food security for Mali. 80% of the labor force works in agriculture, and if the Niang brothers can help make that a viable economic enterprise, the hope is that young, strong people will stay in the villages and countryside instead of fleeing to urban areas and foreign countries for jobs.

Malian kids, by Marouen

“In Mali, we don’t need more telecommunications investments,” Niang states. “We need to be producing food for people to eat. There’s a whole generation of young entrepreneurs right here in Mali. But if you’re hungry, you can’t study at school, you can’t start a business, and you can’t have respect and dignity.”

Niang and his brother Salif (a doctoral student in international relations at Purdue) are bringing their educations, innovative ideas and investors (!!) back to Mali to make Malo Traders a reality. “We know the country, we know the people, and we’re not going anywhere until we’ve tackled and solved this problem of chronic hunger in Mali. Because if we don’t do it, nobody else will.”

For passion like that (and for a business plan so compelling it’s been lauded in social entrepreneurship competitions from Harvard to University of Washington — and now onto Berkeley!) my $100 today is going to Malo Traders.

Posted in Children, Development, Environment, Good News, Inspiration, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurs Tagged Agriculture, Anemia, Democracy, Djenne, Economic enterprise, Food security, Fox School of Business, Global Sparkseed Social Innovation Competition, Harvard University Pitch for Change, Iron, Mali, Malnutrition, Malo Traders, Mohamed Ali Niang, Niang brothers, Niger, Philadelphia, Polishing rice, Post-Harvest losses, Poverty, Processing plants, Purdue University, Rice, Sarif Niang, Social Entrepreneurs, Social investing, Social Venture, Staple crops, Sustainable agriculture, Telecommunications, Temple University, Texas, Timbuktu, Ultra Rice, University of Washington Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition, Vitamin A, West Africa, Young generation, Zinc

Post navigation

December 2019
S M T W T F S
« Nov    
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  

If you like THIS blog….

...come on over to Heifer 12 x 12, my totally cool blog from 2012!

TWITTER

Follow @blondergan

WATCH BETTY ON MARTHA STEWART & CNN!

Just click on the PRESS button in the masthead, and the videos are right there!

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.” –Mother Theresa

When you pray, move your feet. (African Proverb)

“The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.” ~Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” ~William Wordsworth

When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. ~paraphrasing Abraham Maslow

“Privilege is being born on third and thinking you hit a triple”. ~Governor Ann Richards

“You must do something to make the world more beautiful.” ~Miss Rumphius

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some small victory for humanity.” –Horace Mann

“To do good, you actually have to DO something.” ~ Yvon Chouinard

“I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” ~Robert Frost

“None of us is free if one of us is chained, none of us is free.” ~Solomon Burke

“Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?” ~Robert F. Kennedy (quoting George Bernard Shaw)

“A hungry man is an angry man.” -Bob Marley

Categories

Charities Children Education Environment Faith Good News Health Issues Inspiration Philanthropy Special People

“They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. ” ~Isaiah 2:4

Copyright

© Betty Londergan and What Gives, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from Betty Londergan is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Betty Londergan and What Gives with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“If you can’t feed a hundred people, feed just one.” – Mother Theresa

YAY FOR US! Individual Americans give $229 billion a year to charity

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing, than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance” ~e.e. cummings

“Everyone can be great because everyone can serve.” ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ~- Nelson Mandela

Who you are is God’s gift to you. Who you become is your gift to God.

“What you seek is seeking you.” ~-Paulo Coelho

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” ~~Cicero

Blog at WordPress.com.
Cancel