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.
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