“I empower women with knowledge, and this makes them fearless.”
- Our Field Educator, Florence
GHI was founded by Julie Carney, Emma Clippinger, and Dr. Emily Morell, who shared the belief that integrating agriculture and nutrition into the health system is the only sustainable solution to effectively treat and prevent malnutrition.
Our work was catalyzed by a little girl named Foybi. When our founders met Foybi, the nine-year-old weighed only 29 pounds. They rushed her to the hospital, where she received the emergency food aid and essential life-saving care she needed. However, they quickly realized this was only a short term fix; the root causes of her malnutrition remained.
It was Foybi who inspired us to focus on children and to work with health clinics to meet patients at the point of care. And it was her young aunt Florence, who accompanied her to the hospital, who ultimately helped shape our program. As one of the first employees, Florence contributed to the original design our curriculum and training materials.
In 2010, GHI began partnering with government Health Clinics to tackle the root causes of malnutrition by equipping families with the seeds, skills, and knowledge needed to create vegetable gardens, prepare balanced meals, and keep children healthy. Since then, GHI has scaled to partner with 19 health centers and several like-minded organizations to serve thousands of families across Rwanda.
Ten years later, Florence still works with us, overseeing our team of field educators to deliver thousands of training a year. And Foybi, healthy and happily enrolled in school, has aspirations of being a teacher someday.
