Helping African Communities Succeed through Moringa Education
The following is a presentation by Mariana Price, South Africa, given to AMH members on 27 January 2019.
Education is the key to Success.
Most of us are aware of the importance of education in helping a community to succeed. And when it comes to moringa, it is important that we address the need for Moringa education in our homes.
Educating the youth would solve a long term problem. It would make young ones understand moringa’s importance in our daily lives to feed ourselves in a healthy way and to heal us at the same time.
BUT (a HUGE but)….
You have to educate about the wrong eating lifestyles that are killing our people. You cannot use something so valuable and mess it up by taking wrong other foods with Moringa. That will make you miss your whole mission and will only get some of the good results.
Africa’s traditional education needs a re-look at transformation to include more health awareness, and through transformation, we will become an Amazing Nation.
Challenge of Poverty
Challenging environments hold so many households back. No one household was singled out to struggle in life. Every individual has the capacity to do whatever they want in life regardless of age sex race or education.
Everyone has the right to this incredible plant that can heal, feed and make us live an incredibly amazing life. Moringa has immense potential! We have to teach and educate in order to bring the changes.
I find the biggest struggles there are in poverty are with the health struggles poor people face. They cannot afford the health care or transport to get to free health care and with all the struggles of the sick people comes the tremendous pressure on our government to provide those services.
When you are sick you feel:
- Upset
- Helpless
- No Energy
- No Future Vision
- Anger
- Fear
- No care for their own life or for anyone around them
It all becomes one huge mess! We as Moringa experts, growers and Marketers have an incredible responsibility to humankind. We need to educate in order to uplift and bring hope to our Nations across Africa as well as Globally.
Here in Africa we are facing tremendous poverty and hate and Anger.
But should we involve ourselves to become better educators and turn back to ground level education in our youth, then we would be able to increase the level of pride back into people’s lives.
And should you be healthy and fed with the correct food, you would feel great because all you then need to worry about is to use your brains, to invent and create better living circumstances, and the level of life becomes uplifted and people would have the energy to think. Imagine the changes we would see:
- Better work and better work ethics;
- Respect for one another;
- Conversations would be more positive;
- There would be time to work productively;
- Life would become more bearable
………..And before you know it …….communities would thrive.
Illness, Poverty and malnutrition brings along
- Negative thoughts,
- Hatred,
- Fear,
- Anger.
And less Positive wealthy Moringa users so less revenue for Moringa in general.
Need for Change
I can only think of YES, WE NEED to CHANGE that old concept.
By Moringa education we can change a family’s life forever. The Health and Wealth statuses would change tremendously. Social issues have a huge impact on the current situation in Africa.
Education in Africa:
57 million children are not in classrooms. 49% would never set foot in a classroom. 31 million are grown children! So we have to invest in Africa! We should come up with new solutions for Africa. Invest in Africa on our own level.
- In Sub Saharan countries 25 % are dropping out of school.
- 10 out of every 20 teachers do not have enough teaching skills.
We should encourage movement to problem solving and shift our minds. By involving the youth would automatically also involve:
- The Younger siblings
- The parents
- The elderly in communities
Why? Because youth are themselves incredible educators and sharers of knowledge.
Their minds are still fresh and less polluted and they have the energy to understand and learn and they are hungry for knowledge and hungry for a great future.
Youth are smart thinkers if guided properly.
The following video encourages and sparks a longing to get involved to heal and to educate through Moringa for a better life. Through this video you would see how so many other social issues we can address by planting Moringa. Although it is not a Moringa video, you can still implement the same values to your Moringa education and training.
Change and Transform
Involving the Private Sector
The private sector people like us need to be involved and donate our knowledge and keep being involved to keep your input sustainable and meaningful. We must provide access to this wonderful plant so our future adults would understand and realise the full use of the products. They would know it like they know now how to buy the basics at a shop.
Through developing society your businesses will flourish. Moringa growers, experts and marketers, do not be selfish!
Through this education initiative we could have great future staff that would be very passionate and would understand your business, and that is what we want.
Passion breeds success!
I was so totally impressed since I have joined Africa Moringa Hub. I saw a Moringa Community that is so extremely caring and committed that I have not seen anywhere else.
Here is a power and passion and we can use that productively to grow the HEALTH AND WEALTH in our communities throughout Africa. This can bring along a positive result.
Dr Kamilus Kasata has given great advice at a youth gathering, which is “Not to become a victim of the 5 P’s”….
- POWER
- POVERTY
- PRESTIGE
- POPULARITY
- POMPOSITY
Let us just keep this in mind!
We should leave our youth with a Healthy and well fed body so they can focus and think to learn well at school, as well as in tertiary education, and we will grow economically.
Let’s build dreamers and achievers. Let us call it the Moringa movement and let us teach how to make that difference.
Realistic Transformation
NOW WHERE TO START? LET US CHANGE AND TRANSFORM! Let’s be realistic while doing the transformation.
Agricultural trade in Africa needs to be addressed to the youth to understand that Moringa has a huge space where we can expand and also tap into the Africa EU markets.
- Teach our Youth first the power and strength of this tree for their own purposes.
- Teach the youth about the possibility for future jobs and involvement in the Moringa Agriculture.
- Teach them the possibilities and to understand why there are so many food products being exported, and that we can expand for that and our own use.
Understanding the future of agriculture in our countries needs to be introduced at a young age to start building the passion and knowledge.
There are a number of ways to start, but I would recommend starting with smaller groups and expanding as your own experience grows.
Target schools and care centres…..
BUT PLEASE COMMIT AND STAY INVOLVED. Involve also other Moringa growers as well as experts and marketers and products on the market can get introduced slowly. By involving more will add value to your efforts and will strengthen the cause and results.
After a while you can grow bigger areas to involve youth and also introduce other vegetables as well as cooking, using ideas, blending teas as well as feeding animals. Start to experiment and grow your own business through this.
Boot Camps
Innovation camps, e.g. would be great, e.g. BOOT CAMPS to understand Moringa. Create camps all over Africa and interchange students to learn during holiday camps. This will grow their skills and they will become future entrepreneurs in Agriculture.
Activities will let learners become more committed and passionate in their fields. To acquire skills while they are young they can become the next big Moringa growers in Africa.
Competitions
Encourage them to become better in their skills through a variety of competitions.
Senegal has a RACE FOR EDUCATION.
- Teaching
- Learning
- Songs
- Support
- Happy Youth
Happy Youth becomes happy adults! Busy youth becomes busy adults! Educated youth will become educated adults! By involving them with growing our trees we can change the mindsets.
Positive Way Forward
Social problems are the biggest downfall if not lifted and attended to. Turning social issues into positive and successful projects we can fight poverty as well as building beautiful and happy adults. Empowering children and equipping them with great health and knowledge and wealth will come into their lives and the countries will prosper.
Educating about Moringa will introduce a cheaper way of introducing nutrients. Moringa protects body cells and is a great source of protein, it keeps young and builds the immune system in a natural and healthy way.
A part of Africa Moringa Hub’s vision included:
“Being committed to developing a trustworthy brand, networking, eradicating poverty and nutrition through eating and planting Moringa.”
By educating we broaden our awareness and more sales will derive from there and it becomes part of marketing. Through education and awareness and an understanding of a product your marketing strategy will have a great success rate.
A lot of marketing has been done through shows, workshops and internet platforms, but we need to reach far beyond that.
Youth education will bring in better care and will bring relief in these struggling communities that are not supposed to struggle.
My reasoning behind this is that the media, organisations, as well as Newspapers and support groups, will see the great difference Moringa has in these communities, and would help us spread the news, and they love to hear success stories.
Goals would be:
- To educate;
- To develop the entire value chain of producers, consumers and marketers;
- To further introduce Moringa into local dietary with emphasis on addressing malnutrition;
- To clean our continent.
Like our President Robert Tehitnga of Africa Moringa Hub said in his New Years Message, that we can make poverty look dignified like Mauritius or Rwanda have managed to do.
By educating we will at the same time help the following areas.
- To make good oil for our people;
- To fight desertification and erosion;
- To feed animals;
- Reduce poverty;
- Expand seed, oil and leaf producing;
- Plant more trees;
- Build fair and credible practises on favour of Africa.
More of this above will bring more wealth and health.
We can develop our own business through helping and educating. We have so much wealth of knowledge within the Africa Moringa Hub members. We can learn from each other and take hands in joined community training projects to ensure great success.
Always be aware of fake news and competitors of other products that will create fear or disbelieve about other competitor health products.
You can watch this last video in your own time. It is very encouraging and a great video to use at your training introduction.
