The meeting was called to order by President Amin at 7:00pm with a toast to King and Canada. The invocation was provided by David Peters.
Attendance:
A total of 20 people signed into the Zoom meeting – 19 members plus 1 guest – our speaker, Taylor Quinn
Announcements:
- Michael Conway Update on the 2023 electric car lottery
- Mike Henry New members and the Membership committee
Please let Mike know if you would like to be a mentor and/ or join the Membership committee
Happy Bucks & Fines:
- Bob Dodds found a lot of happy people and fondly found a lot of fine fellows to fine
The speaker, Taylor Quinn from Tailored Foods was introduced by Sundeep Khosla
- Taylor has a long history with Rotary, including attending Rotary Leadership Youth Award (RYLA) and later becoming a RYLA mentor (in BC)
- Tailored Foods is a small Canadian non profit organization, based in BC
- Taylor works with local business people in poor countries across the world to produce “nutritious delicious food is available for everyone everywhere” to reduce malnutrition and poverty
- He grew up in Halifax, moved to Toronto, and then lived in Liberia in 2016, where he found that nutritious food was not available locally and this was a main reason for malnutrition in this country
- Taylor, a food anthropologist, decided to dedicate his young life to finding and promoting nutritious, delicious, affordable and locally produced
- One of the first plants he helped to build included food-producing machinery built using motorcycle parts, which are easier and cheaper to maintain locally
- Taylor used marketing strategies similar to those used by large corporations
- He then replicated this model in the Congo, with a grant from the World Food Program
- There he trained 16 women, across 16 distribution centres, to produce protein bars packaged in banana leaves using local ingredients
- His third project was in Mozambique, where they love peanut butter but were importing it at a high cost
- Taylor helped to build a small-scale decentralized operation that produced low cost peanut butter locally
- His next stop was the Cameroon and was another female-led operation, using small grants paid to local people
- Then on to Ethiopia to produce nutritious, tasty, low-cost biscuits
- Taylor’s mission is to end hunger by 2030 and he shared 3 core truths with us
- He talked about Somalia where the UN is giving cash to people in refugee camps to buy food, and these people then buy products from Nestle, Coco-Cola, etc. which are not nutritious
- Other producers of nutritious food products advertise characteristics rather than outcomes – Taylor uses language people will understand
- Tailored Foods is currently operated by Taylor + 1 50% + 1 25% employee, and they are looking to hire 2 more part time people
- Taylor discussed his sustainable funding model, which includes a 5% profit share of the products that he creates
Taylor was thanked by Sundeep
Final Comments:
- Sundeep – next Global Medic Saturday Feb 25 from 1 to 5pm
Next Meeting
- Feb 6 Africa Mercy Ship: Nancy O’Neil Eichenberg – location TBA
President Amin closed the meeting at 8pm with a toast to friends and Rotarians around the world.