Welcome to Toddler Food Partners
Our staff of volunteers thanks you for visiting our website to learn more about how you can help toddlers in developing countries overcome malnutrition. We provide knowledge, equipment and hands-on training to make a Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) that has helped thousands of toddlers become healthy and go on to live a normal productive life. Please peruse our pages to learn more and see how you can be a part of the solution for a healthy world.
Start your tour of our website by watching a video showing the making of RUTF at the faciltiy in Haiti run by our partner Meds and Food for Kids (MFK). The ingredients for RUTF are peanuts, sugar, vegetable oil, powdered milk and a vitamin mix. The video takes you from receiving raw peanuts through packaging and shipping to treatment centers. Toddler Food Partners (TFP) has worked closely with MFK for several years. We helped evaluate, acquire and install many of the machines you will see in the video.
Featured Program
MNT for SAM in India
TFP is currently working with Sion hospital in Mumbai to treat children suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM). We helped equip and commission a factory to produce Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT), an RUTF like product, that is being used by the hospital to treat children from the Dharavi slum, the largest slum in Asia. In spring 2011, TFP Executive Director, Larry Carpenter, and one of our volunteers, Bharat Parekh, traveled to Mumbai. They worked with our local partners to install equipment and start production.
One of our local partners, Center for Technological Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), did much of the 'legwork' in the Mumbai area to evaluate and procure the equipment that is being used.
For a more in depth description of this project, select Projects from our menu above.
Donations designated for this project are eligible for a matching grant.
Donations can be made through GiveMN and their secure website: GiveMN.org, Toddler Food Partners
In the News
26 December 2011
The Mumbai newspaper, Daily News and Analysis, reports today that "Sion Hospital has asked the women and child welfare department to adopt the medical nutrition therapy (MNT) model to provide nutritious food for [malnourished] children". Toddler Food Partners has worked with Sion Hospital and the CTARA Department within India Institute of Technology (IIT) to establish a facility to manufacture MNT at its Urban Health Center in Dharavi. Click here to read full article.
Sierra Leone, December 2011
Larry Carpenter, Executive Director, and a TFP Volunteer, Shiv Murty, have begun discussions with a former student from Larry's years of teaching in Sierra Leone. The student has formed a non-profit, Bedyna, that has helped build primary and secondary schools in his birth village. He has asked TFP to help set up a school lunch or breakfast project that can assure that all students have better and consistent nutrition throughout the year. This partnership is in the beginning stages but we expect the partnership to grow. The first stage of this project will be to obtain a grinder that can be used to process peanuts into peanut butter to provide a high protein snack in the schools.
Many thanks to all of you that participated in Give to the Max day by making a contribution to Toddler Food Partners. Your generosity made the day a resounding success!
One of our volunteers has pledged to match all donations up to a total of $5000 that are dedicated to our "MNT for SAM in India" project. All donations that came in on Give to the MAX day were matched! It is still valid and your donations will still be matched.