Helping Save the Lives of Malnourished Children in Africa through Donation
We value our ability to collaborate with organizations to help make people’s lives better. One particularly special partnership was with an amazing non-profit called Edesia Nutrition that makes fortified ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF) that are saving the lives of severely malnourished children throughout developing countries.
As an important carbohydrate, sugar is a key ingredient in Edesia’s life-saving formula. Our donation of 44,000 pounds of extra fine granulated sugar from our Yonkers Refinery allowed Edesia to send four large shipping containers full of RUTF to treat children in Malawi and Mozambique. The two countries are part of our raw sugar supply chain.
“We were excited to partner with Edesia to make these shipments of their tremendous products possible to Mozambique and Malawi,” said Rafael Vayá, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility. “We are particularly pleased that our sugar is used in Edesia’s products and that we were able to help children in need in countries that regularly provide us with raw sugar.”
Established in 2009 and now making 1.5 million packets each day at its Rhode Island factory, Edesia has been our customer since 2017. Their peanut-based products are shipped all over the world to children in need and are distributed by humanitarian aid workers.
Our donation of 20 totes of Domino® Sugar provided an important ingredient to make Plumpy’Nut® and Plumpy’Sup™ that saved more than 7,000 children suffering from malnutrition in Africa. Plumpy’Nut® is a fortified peanut paste that quickly treats the most severe malnutrition cases, and Plumpy’Sup™ is used to treat moderately malnourished children. A full course of treatment for a severely malnourished child includes three sachets of Plumpy’Nut® a day for six to seven weeks, while a Plumpy’Sup™ paste is eaten once a day for 12 weeks as a supplement. Both products are shelf stable, require no preparation before consumption and provide 500 calories per sachet.