Jenny PerezExecutive Director, Herbalife Nutrition Foundation
Boundless opportunities for every child: that is what we strive for at the Herbalife Nutrition Foundation (HNF). Like many nonprofits, however, our partners have faced many challenges this year due to COVID-19.
The organizations that make up our Casa Herbalife Nutrition program – through which we leverage local initiatives and partner with existing charities to provide healthy meals and nutrition education to children and families around the world – showed incredible resilience to continue their work during these times of uncertainty.
Through our partners’ hard work and the support of our committed distributors, we were able to serve 229,349 children in 170 Casas Herbalife Nutrition around the world in 2022.
A couple of stories come to mind and warm my heart, and I’d like to share them with you.
Stories from Casas Herbalife Nutrition
Bombom is an 8-year-old kid and second-grade student at SDN 5 Besakih elementary school in Bali. Bombom has to walk about 1.5 kilometers to go to school every day. Because of this, he used to skip breakfast and rarely had any sources of protein, such as milk, beef, or pork.
The Herbalife Nutrition Foundation partnered with the Bali Caring Community Foundation to create the Breakfast Assistance Program, which helped provide healthy and nutritious meals to students regularly.
Today, Bombom excels in both academics and sports, which speaks to the change that having regular, nourishing meals can have on a child.
There is also Camila, a 3-year-old girl who went to Una Nueva Esperanza, a Casa Herbalife Nutrition in Mexico, which supports exclusively low-income families whose children were diagnosed with cancer. Here, Camila is receiving the proper nutrition for her leukemia while getting chemotherapy treatment to gradually improve her health and wellbeing.
All of this is possible thanks to the generosity of donors who contribute to HNF each year. This year, we’re launching a new edition of our traditional Year-End Giving Campaign.
The Importance of Giving Back
The rates of global hunger, acute food insecurity and malnutrition are rising and pose some of the largest risks to health. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations estimates there could be two billion undernourished people by 2050. In addition, food insecurity – a lack of consistent access to enough, nutritious food – contributes to rates of overweight and obesity, as well as malnutrition and developmental disorders.
Children are especially vulnerable to these problems. Chronic under nutrition in early life is linked to reduced schooling, poorer cognitive skills, lower earnings and a higher likelihood of living in poverty. The Casa Herbalife Nutrition program aims to improve the lives of children in need by partnering with existing charities to provide healthy meals and nutrition education to children around the world.