The bottles look familiar to us here in the States: a turquoise arch, a solar eclipse, a white cap. But thanks to the One Love One Earth Foundation, these bottles will become well known to more than 500 children in Africa, too.

In partnership with One Love One Earth, Source Naturals®  is supplying a year’s worth of vitamin A to more than 500 children in Kenya and Rwanda, and a year’s worth of multivitamins to 20 former child soldiers.

Two of our employees delivered the vitamins earlier this year during a 2-week trip that proved to be an inspiring and emotional experience for Ashley Cox and KeiTung Liu from our R&D team. They made the journey themselves to safeguard the vitamins because supply shipments are often stolen by terrorist groups in this part of the world. 

For Ashley, “meeting the former child soldiers from South Sudan was overwhelming. You can read about the horrors of children being thrown into war, but it becomes so real when you see the scars on their faces, the tears in their eyes. They have survived so much.”

Ashley and Kei visited a total of 6 schools, 4 in Kenya and 2 in Rwanda. Along with the vitamins, they brought little toys and candies for the kids and made a huge impression.

The vitamin A helps enormously in a country where there is 84% vitamin A deficiency (VAD). According to the World Health Organization, VAD is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children, and it significantly increases the risk of severe illness, even death, from such common childhood infections as diarrheal disease and measles.

Ashley founded the One Love One Earth Foundation after her experience teaching in Africa in 2013. “I was living in Kenya and working in the Kawangware slum outside of Nairobi, and it really hit me how nutrition could help these kids. My students could barely keep their eyes open during my lessons because they hadn’t eaten that day or in several days.” She created the foundation when she returned to the U.S.

“Becoming a non-profit with 501(c)3 status helped me reach out to the Santa Cruz [California] community, and we’ve been able to purchase sugar, porridge, rice, beans, medicines, first aid kits, backpacks, shoes, and school supplies.” The foundation also helps the local community, and has handed out sandwiches and hot tea and raincoats to the homeless in Santa Cruz.

In the future, Ashley is hoping to partner with solar companies to bring electricity to African schools.

For more information about One Love One Earth Foundation, please visit OneLoveOneEarth.org.