Couple Feeds 100,000 Starving Children From Their Living Room

About this sponsorship: In honor of the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s historic ascent of Mount Everest, Patch and Grape-Nuts are teaming up to highlight those who inspire people around them to climb their own mountains.

When Dr. Mark and Mardi Manary realized that malnutrition kills more than twice as many children as HIV/Aids and Malaria combined, and there was a solution, they acted on their impulse and founded projectpeanutbutter.org in the basement of their Maplewood home. Their goal is to save 2 million children by 2015. Having already helped saved more than 100,000 children, they are well on their way to attaining their ultimate goal.

Here, the Manarys take a moment to share with Patch readers the challenges and inspiration behind their remarkable achievement.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve taken on?

A: The biggest challenge I have taken on was in order to make available enough peanut butter-based ready-to-use therapeutic food to run a large scale feeding project in Malawi in 2005 (about 65 tons), I needed to start a fully certified food production factory. I did this as a physician, someone with no formal training or experience in food production. Our local factory manager, Liyaka Nchilamwela, also had no experience in food production. We translated our experience with small scale food mixing, and learned all of the quality control rules and regulations.

Q: What inspired you to take on this challenge?

A: The observation that recovery from severe malnutrition increased from 45 percent to 95 percent when this special food was used, so for this project in Malawi about 7500 more children would recover.

Q: Did you succeed?

A: Yes, we were the first food production factory in Africa to pass the rigorous UNICEF inspection.

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