The notion of health and healthy living is inescapable in the United States. Magazines offer tips for ahealthy lifestyle; places of work or school encourage healthy living with incentives; commercials and advertisements sell the idea of health. Opportunities to pursue a healthy lifestyle are everywhere.

However, these opportunities do not exist all over the world. The small coastal villages on MfanganoIsland, Kenya are faced with many problems that inhibit healthy communities. With local HIV prevalenceestimated to be over 30%, Mfangano Island is struggling to address the impact of one of the most criticalconcentrations of HIV/AIDS anywhere in the world. Poverty and disease have forced these venerablecommunities to radically change the island’s natural landscape to produce enough goods to survive. Theeffects of deforestation and overfishing now threaten the rainfall supply, which this agriculture-basedeconomy relies on. Without proper nutrition and a strong, natural environment, the communities ofMfangano have no hope of fighting the invasive effects of HIV/AIDS, which has penetrated the health ofthe island at every level. With the current lack of long-term food security, these communities cannot besustained, nor can the health of the community improve.

Organic Health Response (OHR), with the help of Nourish Minnesota, addresses food security with outreach through education. Knowledge of sustainable nutrition and reforestation will stabilize a sustainable environment and enable the communities of Mfangano to pursue better overall health.The students traveling to Kenya from Minnesota will work alongside the Mfangano community to train secondary school students in a curriculum of sustainable nutrition and forestry with hands-on experience on test plots. This will provide young adults with the tools to care for themselves, their families, and their environment with innovative, locally appropriate farming and forestry techniques.

Your donations will bring Nourish Minnesota closer to our $8,000 total project goal. This money will go to Organic Health Response, which they will use to prepare the curriculum with us, construct test plots, purchase farming and agriculture tools, and seedlings. We greatly appreciate your support and the timeyou took to learn about this issue!