Seven out every ten children in the world do not know where their next meal will come from. Even that meal will not provide the vitamins and nutrition necessary for the proper development of their young bodies.
Because the body’s ability to fight off disease is directly related to a regularly balanced diet, nutrition is an essential ingredient of any public health program.
PHI believes that to prevent death from poor nutrition, its programs must focus on several components: the educational level of women, the elimination of extreme poverty, the lack of access to basic and emergency health care, basic sanitation services and the development of programs which produce affordable highly nutritious foods.
To insure that sufficient soy is available for this new and innovative nutrition program, PHI is coordinating with the University of Santa Elena’s Department of Agriculture. Working together with the University and a number of communas (politically united groups of villages), PHI will help the communas to form cooperatives for the development of new soy farms and the collective operation of the soy industry.
This is a relatively new program to Pubic Health International. As a first step, PHI has applied to the Rotary Foundation for funds to purchase and send to Ecuador several “Soy Cows” (machines which make milk from soy beans). PHI will place the “Soy Cows” in two project villages on the Santa Elena Peninsula.