“Children,” said John W. Whitehead, the founder of the human rights non-profit Rutherford Institute, “Are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”
The message that non-profit emergency food manufacturer and distributor, Mama Cares Foundation, wants to send to that future is one of hope for the approximately 178 million children around the world living on the edge of starvation.
You read that right: 178 million starving children, with 20 million under the age of five, one in four of whom will die before he or she reaches six years of age. This translates to one death every six seconds, and none of them need to happen if each and every person living in the developed world contributed less than the price of a cup of Starbucks daily.
The Mama Cares Foundation, which makes an easy-to-use, non-refrigerated food supplement called Re:vive, packaged in a flexible plastic pouch that even a small child can manage to open and eat, has been given a tremendous challenge and an amazing opportunity. During the month of May, every dollar donated will be matched by an anonymous donor.
Not only will this nameless donor match every donation up to $100,000, effectively doubling your contribution, but it will award a bonus of $50,000 if the goal of $100,000 is exceeded.
The money, $42,000 of which has already been raised, will go to reach more children living on the edge of extinction; children who, if they live instead of dying, could potentially transform that future we will never see from a wasteland into a paradise.
But they have to survive to do it.
The Re:vive product is actually made by Mellace Family Brands, which assumes much of the overhead cost for the production and for the Mama Cares organization. Its founder and executive director, Mike Mellace – who is also the head of Mellace Family Brands – is currently challenging French supplemental nutrition manufacturer, Nutriset, makers of Plumpynut, for its commercial patent on the product. No court date has yet been set, but Nutriset has a deadline of May 26 to respond to the challenge.
Mellace, who says he got into the nutritional supplement market as a result of the challenge presented by TV journalist Anderson Cooper in his CBS 60 Minutes segment on Plumpynut, admits that when he started he didn’t know about the patent situation.
“We responded to Cooper’s challenge saying that, if more companies were willing to make this type of nutritional supplement, more children could be saved,” Mellace noted. “So we decided to use our industry contacts and our manufacturing expertise to see if we could, indeed, make a difference.”
According to Mellace, the company is in pre-production, manufacturing test batches whose production costs suggest that Re:vive could undercut Plumpynut prices by about 20 percent. In addition, working through World Vision, a Christian relief agency dedicated to fighting poverty, Mama Cares already has a pipeline for its product, which will be priced to cover overhead if not to make a profit. Mama Cares also has its own Facebook page, for those who want to follow the non-profit’s fight to save the children.
But then, for Mellace, who adopted an Ethiopian orphan named Ammanuel, it’s not about money. It’s about the goal of ending hunger.
“For $25, you can take a child from death to life.” Mellace adds.
Note: For more information be sure to visit their facebook page and website.
More on Celsias:
Can You Patent Life-Saving Nutrition?
Put Your Ethical Foot Forward and Help Build a Well
Plumpynut image sourced from Zyozy blog.
