Entrepreneur Lisa Sohanpal’s startup Mini nom nom’s, a children’s food business in London is working to reduce childhood obesity in the UK, while also attempting to reduce hunger and child employment in India.
Mini nom nom’s sells healthy ready-to-eat meals with no added salt and preservatives for British children, and uses a portion of the profit from these sales to feed beneficiaries of Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal programme at a school in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Seeing an absence of healthy ready-to-eat meals for children (a big problem for working parents), Sohanpal launched her business in 2014, and her products have already been very well received. The Mini nom nom’s meals haven’t just been widely accepted because of the product, they have also gained popularity because of the social values they stand for.
“I met the president of The Akshaya Patra Foundation at a networking event in London, and felt inspired by the charity’s mission to feed five million school children per day by 2020. The sponsorship of the school in India improves attendance, as children get their meals provided; usually a roti (Indian round bread), dal and vegetable curry. This meal means the children don’t have to go out and earn money to pay for their food instead of going to school. Keeping them in school for longer results in the pupils getting better jobs when they leave, which will hopefully mean they can use their education to rise out of poverty,” Sohanpal says.
Through Mini nom nom’s Sohanpal hopes to raise awareness among children in Britain of the hunger and poverty in many countries across the world, and show them how they can be instrumental in making a change.
Source: Forbes
