Author: kam220

Today was another awesome day. We had an early start and baked our third variation of the muffin. We added 2 grams of sugar to see if people prefer the muffin just a little bit sweeter, rather than the 4 grams of sugar we added yesterday. We also made pudding with less banana, and pudding with added sugar, to finish out those variations from yesterday.

Neena, Karli, Rachel, Matt, and Kayla went to the Rogbalan, an area about 10 minutes from World Hope. The translators: Abubakar, Ibraham, our intern: Futia, and a teacher: Ngadi came with us to help us with our interviews. We learned about this village because Ibraham, one of our translators, lives here. We divided and conquered to get 55 total interviews done! We were so happy that today was another successful data gathering day.

(A mom trying our pudding)

(Matt giving a survey)

(A girl trying our muffin)

(Kayla and Ibraham’s family)

While most of the group was at the village, Chris and Seanna worked on other things. Seanna worked on a proposal for the ETeam grant from VentureWell to help us fund our project. Chris went to the market and spoke to a bunch of women selling different types of ready-to-eat food to figure out how we should distribute our muffin and pudding. Most women bought their products from somebody and then sold them in the market. We believe that this is how we will sell our products.

It was a very productive, but relaxing Saturday! We are looking forward to collecting more data tomorrow!

Today was such a great day! Both malnutrition teams finally made their products – the sweet potato cakes for the 2 to 5 – year- olds and the sweet potato / plantain pudding for children 6 – 24 months. We were so happy with how they came out and think that we are off to a great start.

In the morning, Kayla and Chris went to the Betteh Bakery. They made the Tappler Bread with the workers. Chris was able to use the rolling machine to soften the dough and roll it out. They rolled the dough into what looked like little breadsticks, and then waited 5 hours for the dough to rise.

While we were waiting, they made the dough for the sweet potato cakes. We roasted some sweet potatoes (for the cakes) and boiled the rest of the sweet potatoes (for the pudding) in a wood burning clay oven. Alex helped position the sweet potatoes based on how they needed to be cooked and the temperature of the oven.

While the sweet potatoes were cooking, we prepared the rest of the dough for the cakes (bananas, palm oil, and corn flour).

While Kayla and Chris were at the bakery, Karli, Neena and Rachel stayed back at World Hope and prepared ground nut butter. Ground nuts are similar to peanuts in the USA, but more wet. We tried several methods of grinding the nut butter, including using a spoon, metal bowl, and sunscreen can. None of these were working efficiently, but thankfully Musa brought us a mortar and pestle and we were able to grind it much faster. We added a drop of palm oil so it would be a little bit less dry.

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After the ground nut butter was finished, Karli, Neena, and Rachel met the rest of the team at Bettah Bakery. We took the sweet potatoes out of the oven, peeled them, and mashed them. We added the roasted ones to the cakes and the boiled ones to the pudding (and also mashed bananas). We put the cakes in the oven to bake, and mashed the sweet potatoes, banana, and groundnut butter in the mortar and pestle to make the pudding.

All of the employees at the bakery tried both of the products and thought that they were great! The pudding went very fast and they even asked for more to bring home to their families.

The sweet potato cakes came out well too, but they were a too dry and were a little burnt. It was a different experience baking with local ingredients and a different type of oven. We are looking forward to revising our strategy and recipe so that we can make them better. It was a very validating experience for us to see how much everybody liked our products!