Women with fuel-efficient stoves in Ghana.

“Even though you might not see face-to-face how lives are changing, I want to let you know that your support is transforming so many lives in our community,” began Alexander Kedje of Shape Lives Foundation, Ghana in a recent email to me.

When we think of charity in Africa, big name organizations are probably the first to come to mind. We hear about World Vision, UNICEF, and Heifer International but it’s the small, unknown, local organizations like Shape Lives Foundation that are perfectly situated to help people in their own communities.

These local organizations, as the blogger Jennifer Lentfer points out, are able to best understand the situation on the ground, and are already rooted and integrated into the community. Where the large international organizations have to work hard to meet people and promote projects, local leaders like Alexander are already known and respected by the people they serve.

I’ve been in contact with Alexander and Shape Lives Foundation for two years now and I am always so excited to see the progress they are making toward empowering the poor and raising the standard of living for the women in their area.

Part of Del Anderson’s mission for Spirit in Action was to encourage and promote local leaders and so, although we have not given a grant to Shape Lives Foundation, I share with you a few highlights from 2011 so that you too can appreciate their local work and service:

* Twenty-five women are now employed in their Moringa Processing Center, plucking the leaves and grinding them into a powder. This great video shows how they process the Moringa leaves into a highly nutritious dietary supplement.
* 1200 Moringa trees have been replanted to grow more leaves to process in 2012.
* Seven women received fuel-efficient stoves and training. Not only will the stoves produce less smoke, they also make it so the women do not have to gather or buy as much wood to cook meals.

Congratulations, Shape Lives Foundation! And we stand with you as your continue your important work in 2012.

Take action, for it is your duty, and we are with you; be strong, and do it. –Ezra 10:4

Related posts:

• Moringa in Prison
• Moringa = Miracle Plant
• CIFORD Kenya: Compassionate Community Action
• Local Realities, Local Adaptation (On How Matters blog)

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Ring, ring…. “Hello?”

“Hello, it’s Newton from Ghana! The world just got a lot smaller…”

So began my Skype conversation yesterday with Newton Amaglo, one of Spirit in Action’s partners in Kumasi, Ghana. Using Skype to “call” me for free online, Newton could see and hear me in real time! It was an exciting experience to hear his voice and catch a quick update on his work growing Moringa plants.

SIA Board member, John Bayer, recently returned from a trip to Senegal and has been enthusiastically networking to see how Moringa might be used in prisons there. John wrote in an email, “We visited the prison while we were there and were shocked at the really terrible conditions with the 700 inmates all living in very cramped facilities with only one meal a day unless they had families in the area to bring them food in the afternoons. Many were malnourished and some were suffering from skin disease/parasites from the very thin infested mattresses they slept on. Don’t need to go on for you to see the huge need here. All I can think of is Newton Amaglo and the Moringa leaf powder and the results he has had, especially with the prison inmates.”

In July 2010, I wrote about how Newton and others on his research team used a SIA Community Grant to train prison employees to grow Moringa. This fast growing and important nutritional supplement can be added to the food of the inmates in the prison infirmaries to great benefit.

Yesterday, Newton told me that they recently trained two more prison employees to grow and process the Moringa. Together, they are building a drier to dry the Moringa leaves, and a mill to grind them into a fine powder to add to the inmates’ soup.

The most efficient way to grow Moringa is in a densely packed square-foot garden and in one season the plants can grow 7 meters (23 ft) over a number of harvests! Above is a picture of one of the researchers demonstrating how to cut the leaves and still keep the plant alive.

Newton said that the prisons all had garden plots that had fallen into disuse. With the gift of training and Moringa seedlings, Newton has since seen a revived interest in gardening at the prisons. He is hopeful that more people will discover the immense health benefits of Moringa and use it more often as a food supplement.

Spirit in Action’s mission is to create a “worldwide network” and this connection between Senegal and Ghana is just part of it – and the Skype call with Newton Amaglo helped that worldwide network feel a little bit more close-knit!

Related posts:

• Moringa = Miracle Plant
• Moringa Tea

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‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ –Matthew 25:40

Part of our mission at SIA is to serve God by empowering others. The passage above clearly states that, indeed, the best way to serve God is to help others, especially those in need. In the Bible parable, those who helped did so by providing clothing, caring for the sick, and visiting those in prison.

Prison officers and their wives enjoy Moringa-enriched meat pies.

An inspiring expression of this good action, Newton Amaglo, a SIA grant recipient and professor at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, is now working with over 400 officers and 2,000 inmates at four prisons new Kumasi to help them improve their diets.

So far Newton and his team have contributed free samples, 50 grams for each prisoner, of the highly nutritious Moringa leaf powder to the prisons. That’s a significant supplement to the prison diet, especially considering that just one gram of Moringa has the same nutrients as:

Considering the rumors of poor food in prisons in the US, we could take this as a lesson!

In these Ghanaian prisons, now, the leaves are used in tea and as a supplement in meat pies. Newton and his team have also recommended Moringa for use in the infirmary because of its many know medicinal healing qualities.

This is not just a handout; Newton also knows the importance of training the inmates. When giving aid the best help leaves the recipient with skills they can use long into the future. As such, Newton claims that the greatest success of the project so far is that “the prisoners are learning the technology of Moringa cultivation and processing so that they can live their lives on it even after serving their sentences.”

Not only do we want to care for our brothers and sisters, we also want to care for our earth. Moringa helps with this too. Newton, who also works as Scientific Manager for Moringa Partners, a Moringa discussion forum, recently recorded this podcast about the ways that Morniga can help combat global warming. (His voice is pretty difficult to hear, but the information is very interesting.) Since Moringa grows so quickly, it can help reforest the denuded land. Its green leaves are also high in chlorophyll and in the podcast Newton tells how these trees can absorb carbon dioxide at a faster rate than an average tree. Another interesting fact: there are currently studies being conducted to see if Moringa can reliably used as a biofuel, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. If you want to read more, Trees for Life has a good, reputable resource page about Moringa.

Wow! Every time I read about Moringa, it is a bit clearer why people call it the “Miracle Tree”. And Newton’s work visibly embodies our passion for providing individuals with simple tools that can drastically improve their lives.

50g Moringa samples are handed over to the prison officers

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When the SIA Board of Directors was debating Newton Amaglo’s grant proposal to promote Moringa power as a nutritional supplement (See post below), the question came up, “Will people like the TASTE of Moringa?”

As you might imagine, this is an important question when you are trying to get young students to like using the Moringa powder in their food. So, I bought some Moringa leaf powder from Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO) for the Board to try the flavor.

I asked Newton for a recipe for Moringa tea to try it out before sharing it with the Board at our meeting this weekend, so I recruited my husband (Boyd) and housemate (E.B.) to be my kitchen tasters. Here is the recipe I got from Newton in Ghana:

“You can preapre an infusion from the leaves by boiling it in water for 10-15 minutes. When it cools you can pour out the liquid to serve and you have moringa drink that you can sweeten with honey to taste. Without milk is prefered by some people while others still like to take it with milk.”

I prepared the tea for us yesterday morning, using the fine powder that smells similar to green tea before added to water. After it is mixed into the hot water it has a strong leaf-like smell and is a forrest green color. We tried it plain, with honey and with honey and milk (or rice milk). The official decision was that the tea is nice and earthy, especially after a few sips to get used to the new flavor. I especially liked it with milk and honey! It was fun to try this new tea and I look forward to sharing it with the Board on Saturday!

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Newton Amaglo has dedicated much of his adult life to studying, understanding, and teaching students at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana about the Moringa oleifera plant.  Why this plant?  Because the amazing Moringa leaf is known to be a rich and cheap alternative source of protein, vitamins and minerals, and thus a potential solution to the malnutrition and hunger pandemic in our world!

In 2008 Newton and Christian Action and Support (ChAS) received a small Community Grant from Spirit in Action to contribute to the government efforts towards reducing poverty, through combating malnutrition, providing access to safe water and energy, creating jobs and preserving the environment. Newton proposed that his could be done through promoting the development of the value chain of the Moringa oleifera plant:  growing, processing and marketing.

From the Moringa leaves, high nutritive value food supplement for malnutrition can be produced; seeds can make oil for biofuels, leaves can be ground into powders to add to food,  and a cake can be processed and used for water purification and other traditional medicine uses.

Since receiving the grant Newton and his colleagues have lead over hundred workshops all across Ghana in churches, military barracks, schools, jails, etc. They have also been able to garner extensive media support through the television, radio and newspapers.  Newton shares that there are all kinds of innovations using Moringa, like soap, Moringa leaf powder infusion bags, capsules, etc. This expansion of the Moringa market, and a sale of one ton of Moringa seeds to Cameroon, which was organized by ChAS, has generated many more income opportunities and stability for their Moringa growers.

As a “Sharing the Gift” project (SIA’s program for “Paying it Forward”), Newton reports “we have trained the MNISTRY of FOOD and AGRICULTURE (MOFA) staffs of two districts on the growing and processing of Moringa.  Each district has at least 40 extension officers. We decided to train them so that they will be in the position to train the farmers under their care.  We have had a workshop to train all extension offers of the 22 districts in Ashanti region.”

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