Nourish on mission to save food

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) has been working since February 2016 and has redistributed enough food to provide over 50,000 meals (one meal weighs about 420 grammes of food). That breaks down to about 2,500 meals a week, which would feed over 100 people a day.

Scores of business executives, philanthropists and other concerned citizens assembled at the Shell Corporate Hospitality Suite, bgTT /Scotia Stand, Queen’s Park Oval, recently to support the official launch of the Nourish TT initiative.

“So exactly what does Nourish do?” Nourish TT president, Krista Santos revealed: “We connect the food industry to NGOs and charities that feed people in need. So to the food companies out there: just by clicking a button on your private portal, you can offer food safely and confidentially to NGOs all around the country. We take care of transportation – we schedule, collect, sort and deliver food.

Our clever mobile app tracks it all, so donors are notified upon a successful delivery.” Nourish TT listed its mission “to alleviate hunger and reduce food waste in Trinidad and Tobago, alongside its vision of a more mindful, socially and environmentally responsible society. It is a registered NGO and was founded by four executive directors on June 12, 2015. The directors are: Santos president; Joannah Nelson, vice president and secretary; Neesha Rambharrack, treasurer and Stephen Moodoo (director of technology). The non-executive directors are Vincent Pereira, chairman; Gillian Warner-Hudson, Robert Tang Yuk and Vaughn Martin.

“Together we created Nourish,” said Santos, “but of course it wasn’t an overnight success. It took some hard work: testing and re-testing the software, preparing the business plan and projections and convincing people that this could actually work. Eight months later Nourish began operating and since February when we started our pilot programme, we have redistributed enough food to provide over 50,000 meals to our partner NGOs – saving those NGOs over TT $ 1,000,000.” Santos also explained details of the legal protection arrangements offered by the Nourish TT initiative: “Nourish signs agreements with all our NGOs to ensure that the food donated is not sold. We require the NGOs to comply with food safety procedures and our contracts protect donors in the highly unlikely event of foodborne illness.” Keynote speaker at the launch was Dr Lystra Fletcher-Paul – a Trinidadian by birth and St Lucian by marriage with Grenadian and Barbadian grandparents. She holds a BSc (First Class Honours) in Agriculture from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine and a PhD from the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Since graduating from UBC, Fletcher-Paul has worked as a lecturer in mathematics, statistics and biometry in the Faculty of Agriculture, UWI; as a national professional and junior professional in Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA) Trinidad and Costa Rica respectively and as the biometrician in CARDI, St Lucia.

For more info: www.NourishTT.

com or email: Neesha.

Rambharrack@NourishTT.co