At the suggestion of a friend, Stoller, a senior at Sabetha (Kan.) High School, got involved in a program called Grains for Hope last year as a way of helping others. Since then, the 17-year-old has called on companies for donations, given a presentation to a citizen group and practiced other skills that she believes will help her in a future career.
Grains for Hope is a non-profit organization that has sent shipments of fortified grains to Mozambique. The organization represents a partnership among Sabetha High School students and faculty, Wenger Manufacturing, and XIM Group. The partnership also includes scientists at Kansas State University and the University of Nebraska-
Lincoln, who are working to determine which grains suit the needs of Mozambique citizens best.
Sabetha is a community of about 2,500 in northeast Kansas.
The Grains for Hope program was the brainchild of Carol Spangler, French teacher and media specialist at Sabetha High School. While working in a summer internship at Wenger, Spangler conceived a plan to involve students in solving a real, rather than an example problem.
Wenger manufactures extrusion processing equipment for the food and feed industries, and its officials supported Spangler´s idea. Grains for Hope was born six years ago when SHS students began the task of finding the most suitable country to receive grain shipments.
Food in many developing countries is scarce and lacks the nutrients required for people to stay healthy, Spangler said. The major goal of Grains for Hope was and is to bring together public institutions and private industry - teenagers and adults - to come up with a
nutritious food product that is economical to produce, tastes good and is easy to cook.
As part of that, each SHS class looked at such criteria as nutrients lacking in typical diets in certain countries, ease of transportation to those countries, economic need, and the potential cultural acceptance of a grain supplement. Each class recommended a country in
a presentation to Wenger officials and a local, non-government organization. Mozambique came out on top.
The actual mission of the program, Spangler said, is to empower youth to make a difference in the lives of others by providing populations in need with the proper food, materials, education and training to help them improve and enrich their quality of life.
"Many times adults don´t really know how capable kids are or that they´re willing to work hard," Spangler said. She estimated that about 45 of the 300 students at SHS still work with Grains for Hope in any given school year.
The citizens of a far-off country aren´t the only ones benefiting from the effort, said XIM principal Gordon Huber. XIM is a product development and project management group serving the food, feed and pharmaceutical industries.
Huber´s son, Tyler, became involved in the program while in high school and was influenced by his experience. Tyler graduated from K-State in May with a major in food science.
Grain donated by Archer-Daniels-Midland goes through the extrusion process at K-State. Extrusion cooks the grain-based ingredients, gives them the desired rice-like or lentil-like shape, and allows the addition of nutrients, said Sajid Alavi, a grain scientist with K-
State Research and Extension. The grain can be anything from rice or lentils to corn or wheat.
Some early work was done in rice, he said, but Mozambique citizens historically have not been big rice consumers. Also, rice is a fairly expensive ingredient.
So, recent efforts have been focused on incorporating nutrients into corn- and wheat-blended products. The incorporated nutrients have included such vitamins as A, B and B12, as well as folic acid, riboflavin, zinc and others, Alavi said.
"In this way, we can provide 25 percent of the recommended daily requirements of these nutrients in a one-quarter cup serving that is easy to cook," he said.
SHS students involved in Grains for Hope make an annual trip to K-State to learn firsthand about the extrusion process.
Over the past three years, two shipments comprising several tons of extruded grain have gone to Mozambique, and another is on the way. A contact person there distributes the food to 10 or more villages, where citizens evaluate the product and provide feedback to Grains for Hope.
Some students are wanting to stay involved even after they leave high school. Such is the case with Joanne Gruber from Morrill, Kan.
Gruber graduated from SHS in 2006 and now is a student a Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. When seeking an internship this spring, she pitched the Grains for Hope idea to Dartmouth officials. They approved, and Gruber has been writing grant proposals with an eye toward securing long-term funding for the project.
"That´s today´s goal," grain scientist Alavi said, "to secure funding to keep research going to find the right grains with the right nutrients."
Longer term, those involved in Grains for Hope envision a center built in Mozambique, where grain products can be processed on-site.
As for high school senior Lauri Stoller, she plans a career in interior design. Still, she´s confident the business and communication skills she is learning in her work with Grains for Hope will serve her well in her future endeavors.
More information about today´s Grains for Hope program is available on the Web at http://www.grainsforhope.org.
©Salina Journal