Signed today the agreement promoted by UCBM together with Italian and international partners
9th November 2017 – Improve the hygiene and health conditions and the quality of life of twenty thousand inhabitants of the villages of Mvimwa, in Tanzania. It is the goal of the international cooperation project started in Tanzania last summer fromUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, In collaboration with the Council for Research in Agriculture and the Analysis of Agricultural Economics (CREA), TheUniversity of Parma, the Association 'Rossi Golfini' Onlus and two African universities, the Strathmore University (Kenya) and the St. Joseph University (Tanzania).
At the center of the project, signed today by the Rector of the University Raffaele Calabrò, L 'nutritional literacy, the development of agricultural technologies , equipment of necessary techniques to make the production, use and preservation of food more efficient in a particularly poor and backward area of the African country which gravitates around the Benedictine monastery of Mvimwa, 100 km from Lake Tanganyika.
Among the healthcare personnel of the partners involved, the public hospital of the capital and the dispensaries of the villages a fruitful collaboration has actually already started on topics related to health malnutrition and health. The 'Parma jelly', a formulation based on typical African foods created by the University of Parma, has been proposed as a useful alternative for childhood malnutrition. At the same time, the idea is also to encourage the birth of agricultural micro-enterprises and encourage green buildingto positively affect the quality of life of the population.
“Already during this year - explains the prof Laura De Gara, President of the Degree Course in Food Sciences and Human Nutrition at theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma - thanks to collaboration of twelve students of our university, we have begun to evaluate specific nutritional needs and deficiencies of the population with tests, also defining the achievable quality standards of the kitchens and canteens. Furthermore, with the contribution of CREA, we have tested the effectiveness of using solar panel dryers to offer the inhabitants better food conservation and we have evaluated the quality of arable land. Thanks to the partnership started with the signing of this memorandum, we hope to be able to continue working to significantly affect the food and agricultural future of the 20 inhabitants present in the monastery area".