A Jamaican Charity Called Mission:FoodPossible Might Have The Answer To The World's Hunger Problem

“Not followed by anyone you’re following.” So reads Peter Ivey’s Twitter bio.

Whether intentional or not, these six-words perfectly encapsulate the first twenty-two years of life for the Founder of Mission:FoodPossible, a two-year-old not-for-profit that is working to eradicate the world’s hunger problem, one community at a time— beginning with Jamaica.

Ivey is no stranger to hunger. Having grown up in poverty in Spanish Town Jamaica, he migrated to New York at the age of seventeen to make a better life for himself. For years he lived as a ghost. He had no family. He was undocumented. Between the ages of 20 and 22 he was sleeping in the streets. Today, at the age of 36, he can relate more to the feeling of an empty stomach than one that is full.

Peter Ivey, having experienced poverty and homelessness, is now using his success to help the hungry.

The Reggae Chefs

And he is not alone. According to the World Food Programme, there are 800 million hungry (i.e. chronically food insecure) people in the world, with 45% of deaths in children under five (3.1 million children) each year related to poor nutrition. In developing countries such as Jamaica, many of the poor suffer silently, opting to sleep to forget hunger rather than face the shame of asking for help— while ironically, the Food and Agriculture Organization reports that more than one-third of all food is wasted.Ivey, having experienced poverty and homelessness, is now using his success to help fight hunger

“The sad story in Caribbean countries, that are overflowing with fruit trees and crops, is that many people, particularly the youth, are food insecure and hungry,” says Ivey. According to UNICEF, less than 25% of Jamaica's children are living below the poverty line.

Ivey’s passions are rooted in his emotional backyard. He believes in the “magic combination” of food, education and heritage, and applies this recipe to both his commercial and his philanthropic endeavours. His New York-based business, The Reggae Chefs is a fusion of personal chef services with Jamaican edu-tainment. “Imagine chefs coming to your house with dominos, who teach you patois while they prepare your jerk chicken or ‘Learn Fi Cook Yuh Favourite’,” he grins. “We had no choice but to be successful— Jamaican culture is worth billions!”

Mission:FoodPossible (M:FP), The Reggae Chefs’ Corporate Social Responsibility arm, was launched in 2017 and is focused on empowering communities through a multifaceted program that incorporates research, education and philanthropy. Utilizing the proprietary Most Valuable Produce (MVP) scoring tool, M:FP assesses which locally-grown produce are best suited to support an area’s food security, from the perspective of geography, nutritional value, yield value, size of harvest, climate resilience and socio-economic factors.

“While at culinary school I could see that my field was exploding,” he remembers. “But in the same time the United Nations said that the numbers of people that were hungry globally was increasing. I considered the irony— more people were cooking but more people were also starving.”

Indeed, according to a June 2019 Food Tank panel on hunger that took place at New York University, the crux of the world’s hunger problem does not lie in a lack of food, but rather in poverty, discrimination and disempowerment. For this reason, M:FP does not place its primary focus on disbursements, but rather on community initiatives that empower the poor to provide for themselves.

“The United Nations has said that it will take $30 billion to solve the hunger problem. I disagree,” Ivey expounds. “I believe the solution is rooted in education, access and empowerment. There are inefficiencies in food production but I see no sign of food shortage— although hunger and food insecurity are a major problem, food shortage is not the cause.”

The Mission:FoodPossible team recently visited the countryside in Jamaica to talk to farmers, visit markets and conduct research on the most plentiful and resilient crops in each given area. “Our objective is to make delicious meals with three ingredients or less— to teach others to make those meals and to educate families about food wastage,” explains Ivey.

“Across the various areas that we visited, we got produce such as callaloo, ackee cassava, yams, green bananas, sweet potatoes and breadfruit. We visited a farmer in Westmoreland. He said that he was throwing away callaloo because he misjudged the harvest. He had no clue about the global impact of food waste; that we could use his misjudgement to feed a lot of hungry people. He gave the surplus to us. Most people only know a hand full of ways to make callaloo. We teach people more ways to consume a product.”

Ackee and callaloo are among Jamaica's Most Valuable Produce (MVP)

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To date Mission:FoodPossible has been responsible for feeding thousands of mouths in Jamaica via initiatives that both feed communities and train people who have the power to impact their communities at a grassroots level.

A recent initiative at a Community Centre in St. Catherine, Jamaica attracted over 600-people. “Not only did we feed people that day,” said Ivey. “We filled a knowledge gap. People took our recipes and brochures before they took the food.”

In February 2019, the program “adopted” a school meal programme at a primary school where almost half of the population is food insecure, and will be assessing the impacts of the programme on behaviour, attendance and overall academic success at the end of the school year.

“The most interesting person attending one of M:FP’s programs is always the youngest for me,” explains Ivey. “I want to share my example. I want to help cultivate the next batch of entrepreneurs. We often hold our events after 6pm because this is when the at-risk youth are the most active.”

Going forward, Ivey has his sights set on countries in Latin America that do not have as wide a variety of staples as Jamaica. Many countries only have three “most valuable produce”— corn, rice and beans. These are countries where we can really make a difference, but we need support.”

Mission:FoodPossible has received most of its backing from the corporate community, individual donations and from Delta Airlines. More funds are required, but Ivey is confident that his objectives are achievable “for less money than most people think.”

“If you look at the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, poverty is number one and hunger is number two,” Ivey explains. “Well, I am a poor kid from Jamaica and I am a trained chef. I am a representative of every black youth. I am a representative of every youth in a challenging environment. A lot of expensive projects are being used to assess what this will cost and what it will take, but nothing is working. Mission:FoodPossible provides a model of hunger alleviation that goes beyond simply writing a cheque— it is about action and empowerment. We are changing how communities “grow, share and consume food.”

Peter Ivey, Founder and CEO of The Reggae Chefs and Mission:FoodPossible

The Reggae Chefs

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