Today proved to be a very productive and rewarding day for the team overall. We were able to take a big step in our data gathering process. Today the malnutrition team started of the day like every other: baking our products in the Betteh Bakery. After a disappointing turnout yesterday, we were excited to hopefully gather as much data as possible today in the Graceland (Barracks) village and test our products there.
While the rest of the team headed out with our three translators, Chris worked to bake different trials of the muffins to identify possible variations to use for taste testing. Chris tested a wide variety of additions and removals of sugar (+/- 1-4 grams), corn meal (+/-1-3 grams), and banana (+/- 1-4 grams). He was also able to learn the correct process of preparing palm oil which is frying the red palm oil for five to ten minutes until the oil returns to its original color
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(Neena, Chris, and Kayla preparing muffins for the day)
Upon arrival, we had to gain approval of the elder “chief” of the village to be able to interact with his people. As a village recently ravaged by the horrors of Ebola, they were hesitant to allow us to conduct taste tests. However, after explaining to him the contents of our products and our overall mission of reducing childhood malnutrition, the chief allowed us to conduct taste tests there for the remainder of the day. We immediately had tons of mothers and children that we were able to get some great feedback from. Walking through the village each house we came upon was home to at least one child under five and a willing mother, easy to agree to the taste tests. After a few hours, we were able to complete forty-six successful questionnaires.
(A baby enjoying our pudding product)
(An infant from the village eating our muffins)
(Kayla exploring the Graceland Village)
As we returned to the World Hope headquarters, we worked to enter the questionnaire information into our digital form and compile it into a well organized excel sheet. Because of our success today, Kayla and Neena worked with our translators to find a few more villages similar to Graceland where we could go over the weekend and into next week. They were able to travel to the Rogbalan Area as well as the SLMB Area of Makeni with the goal of convincing the chiefs of these areas to allow us to conduct questionnaires there as well. These conversations went really well, and we were able to plan taste testing in Rogbalan on Saturday and taste testing in the SLMB Area on Sunday afternoon. We really look forward to exploring these new areas, and gaining as much data as possible.
(Gorgeous views in the Rogbalan area)