Eat2Grow, an innovative social enterprise is revolutionising disaster relief with just the press of a button on their “Track Your Impact” application alongside their Food Bars. Donors and donees have never been this close.
by Savannah Robinson and Elif de Sousa Vieira
GoFundMe links have long been the solution to our moral dilemmas of feeling guilty that we cannot “do enough” to help people experiencing atrocities and disasters worldwide.
We feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and anguish of watching young children losing their lives when their lives have just started, young men and women starving from lack of access to food and water and seeing war destroy whole nations and homes.
We run to these GoFundMe links to find solace so that we are able to at least feel like we are doing the right thing, that we are helping those in need, and we are assisting in the only way we know how to. But how many of us actually follow up on our donations?
Many times this care for the cause gets lost in the transaction in your bank account, and we never know where the donation goes to or how it directly impacted the donee.
Eat 2 Grow has closed the gap between donor and donee by launching an application called Track Your Impact, which tracks all of their food bars that are donated.
Eat-2-Grow (E2G) Food was founded in 2022 by Peter Henderson, a former news cameraman for the BBC and an entrepreneur. He was motivated by the struggles he witnessed first-hand throughout his career.
“I looked back at my career, where I travelled around the world many times, filming and witnessing history unfolding in front of me. I saw famines, I saw wars, disasters, but most of all, I recognized a lot of very hungry people and I don’t know if you’ve ever come across a mother with two screaming kids who are basically starving,” he told Artefact.
After witnessing huge bags of maize being dropped out of a Hercules aeroplane by UN agencies, Peter felt this was an unsuitable way to deliver humanitarian aid and ease famine.
“When the bags landed on the ground, if it didn’t hit you on the head and kill you, by the time you picked it up, you had to cut down a tree, find water, cook it and eat it. People would be full, but they would just be full on carbohydrates and refined food. So they’d wake up hungry in the morning. So it definitely wasn’t sustainable.”
In his quest to understand the impacts of climate change and support renewable energy, he came across an opportunity to invest in the microalgae Spirulina Vulgaris. This is described as nature’s superfood, because it is packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and protein.”
Henderson was amazed by the nutritive value of Spirulina and thought it could be an essential ingredient for sustaining people who are experiencing malnourishment.
“I kept thinking if I could get them Spirulina and into a food bar, something that’s kind to the planet, that’s nutritious and good for them, it would alleviate their immediate hunger, but also set them up for healthy eating that’d be really cool.”
Founded on this key ingredient, this is how Eat-2-Grow Food Bars came to be. Working closely with a food scientist, each bar contains 500 calories and 30 grams of protein, keeping a consumer’s hunger suppressed for many hours as well as being delivered in biodegradable packaging with a 18 month shelf life.
Knowing Spirulina does not taste pleasant, the E2G team worked with the World Food Programme to develop the E2G Food Bar as a food replacement, following their guidelines.
“We had 11 recipes with lots of trial and error. As you can imagine, the food palette of somebody in North India is different to someone in South India. So we had to send the food bars around the world for testing and feedback to understand what tasted nice and what wasn’t.”
He believes it to be “one of the healthiest things that anybody can eat in the world,” as it contains only seven ingredients such as oats, chia seeds and nuts making it healthy, halal, and suitable for vegetarians.
Although it’s not a replacement for three meals a day, Henderson advises that “it’s not enough to have one bar a day to keep you healthy but it’s designed to be a supplement for other food sources.”
Beyond the efforts to distribute the bars, E2G have found a sustainable way to grow Spirulina across communities who have a lack of access to food. This incentive gives people the opportunity to learn about farming as well as earning a stable income, equipping them with the necessary skills to sustain themselves and their families.
“We have a microalgae farm upliftment and development programme in Zimbabwe. We’ve built a microalgae farm where we have the ability to feed 500 people a day, five grams of Spirulina powder. It’s in the form of a powder, which is introduced into the existing food and the meal. One teaspoon is equivalent to two chicken thighs in terms of the protein level.”
The farms work with renewable energy sources such as solar panels and recycled water to produce food, ensuring an environmentally cautious approach to tackling global issues.
With these tireless efforts to assist those in danger, such as the firefighters in LA saving lives and extinguishing fires, E2G bars are helping to bring people proper nutrients in a fast and reliable manner.
“When disaster happens, it’s the search and rescue, doctors, nurses, and people helping on the ground who are eating them mostly because they don’t have time to go and sit down and look for a meal.”
In these efforts to deliver E2G Food Bars to first responders and victims alike, their app “Track Your Impact”, allows donors to see the difference that they make.
Launching on January 29th, the AI-powered app, takes you on the journey of the donation of E2G Food bars, from factory to destination.
Once you purchase a bar on the app, you get “a tracker, which tells you the date that your money was received, when the food is out for delivery and then pictures of the food actually being delivered to the community on the ground, saying your impact has been delivered and this person’s life has been changed. There’s also a live map of exactly where it was done.”
E2G’s app is revolutionising the transparency of the donation process, by removing a barrier of entry they once had. Originally being targeted to clients such as UNICEF and World Food Programme, larger agencies who could afford to buy in bulk, this model did not work.
“It was very tough to get somebody to buy a large sum of E2G bars because it was a huge ticket.” However, Henderson was inspired by his wife’s enthusiasm from a text message she received from the hospital stating that her blood donation had been used. He thought: “If we could get that same reaction that my food bar has just been eaten, wouldn’t it be cool if we reduce the barrier to entry from $200,000 to $2?”
Now anyone can donate as little as £1.59 to send one bar to someone in need of food, thus eliminating the element of mystery within the donation process.
Images courtesy of Eat-2-Grow.