Imtiaz Sooliman – House Call part 24 Gift of the Givers

Because

one gift of the

givers foundation now we are still talking to us about the

relationship with government as part of international disaster

response. It's very good to have relationship with government. It

breaks diplomatic red tape. So my relationship with our government,

what all the chairs again, Before the ANC time? What ANC time? What

changes in the President's made no difference to me. My aims to get

the job done. So it was the government of the day. I work with

them, and my relationship was with foreign affairs, which is now

international relations, because in most cases, disasters outside

the intervention from foreign affairs. The advantage of that

relationship is that it clears huge ambassadors use embassies or

other parts of the world, and when you walk into a country, in most

cases, the door just opens up and he walks straight through, because

you have the government on your side. So diplomatic passport, but

government representatives sometimes travel with me as part

of the mission, so you know, and the embassy meets you, the

ambassador meets you. And really, there are difficulties, as in any

disaster response, but by far and large, we have been well received

everywhere in the world, because our government has done everything

possible to facilitate, as we sort of represent South Africa when we

go across anyway in the world. So your general motto is to relieve

physical distress, emotional distress, and to improve the lives

of mankind. Now disaster management, or disaster seems to

be central to this process. But what are some of the other things

that the organization does outside disaster management or disasters

we have 22 projects all together. We started off as a disaster

response agency. After that, we designed container clinics. We

said, if we can build a hospital in containers and take it 1000s of

kilometers away, we can do container clinics, because that

time, kwasama, the now Home Minister, affairs minister, came

up with this idea of, remember, of primary healthcare. Primary

Healthcare 94 became a big buzzword in the medical circles.

So we said together, and it's going to become a big buzzword

again. Now, yeah, going forward, in preparation for the NHI In

fact, it's central to the National Health Insurance also is going to

be primary healthcare, because there have been complaints and

concerns that the South African medical system is more curative

and you can start to become primary healthcare and

preventative base will do a lot to alleviate the problem that we have

exactly. So we designed a container clinic, and we started

putting it in rural areas in South Africa. We have 20 such clinics in

the country. That was the second project, and there we partnered

government again, because we said, in terms of running, it's better

to run, be run by government, because as the protocols change,

they can implement the protocols in the system. So it's easier for

them just to manage the whole program, which we gave them. But

in between, as an one of our other projects, we supply medical

facilities, we supply ultrasound machines, we give medicines, you

know, that kind of stuff to hospitals. So a medical project is

the third thing is another project after clinics. There's a hospital

called Sara Fox in Cape Town where there's abandoned children

recuperating children that come from Red Cross and other

hospitals. And we fund it every month in terms of the food

supplies, we renovated parts of the hospital, put in new painted

the whole hospital, put in beds, linen supply was required on a

monthly basis. And we want to expand that project. It's only one

and a half year old. So that's something else that we do. Then

closer to home here Soweto, the Adelaide Tambo School for the

physically challenged, the physically challenged children in

Soweto, we've become a partner in that school again, helping

refurbishing. We made arrangements for lotto to put a major swimming

pool in the in the in the school itself. Then special kind of

equipment for those kind of kids to play with. We put that in. We

look at putting extra classrooms and extra structures. We've

already given the plans in. Takes a long time for the plans to come

out. Special type of playgrounds for the last two years, the

special Paralympic sports where these kids are involved in they

went to PE we funded the whole event. Those are the kind of

things that we do. Then another thing related to physically

challenged people is a wheelchair distribution. We do that in a big

way also. So like this, there's many other projects. We design a

special nutrition supplement, you know, which we use also for people

in different types of conditions. We designed that.

We got samples here. So is this the busses of product? There's a

history

behind this product

in 2003

2002

we were at NASDAQ, you know, the world's Summit on Sustainable

Development. I see, whilst we were there in September, there was a

write up in the front page of The Sunday Times to say that 167

children died out of starvation in the Eastern Cape. We were the only

agency that responded and took in lots of food parcels. We then met

the then Minister Zola skivia of social development. He said, I

love what you do. I love what you are doing and what you've done

here. He came to me afterwards. He said.

Can you work with government and help us design a program? How to

spend 400 million Rand? I said, Fine. I put nine points together

game the program. Few months later, he came back to me. He

said, I love the food parcel program. He said, Can you run,

design a food parcel program and run it? I said, not a problem. He

said, but there's only one problem you have to tender. Government.

Rules are, everybody has to tender. So I said, Minister,

advice is free. I don't tender. I'm not a business. I'm an NGO. I

will not tender. Time went on. It went on tenders. They called me

five times. I refused all five times.

Seven provinces were

given tenders, big companies. Seven provinces got it February,

2003 they came back to me. They said, please? I said, no, they

called me a week later. They said, You have been appointed for KZN

and Eastern Cape. We went to Treasury, we went to cabinet, we

went to Parliament. We waived all tender roles. We appointed you,

and we give you the two most complicated provinces in this

country, Eastern Cape and KZN. You design a program. We give you 60

million Rand to do the food parcel and to roll it out. I said, Mr.

Minister, money up front, I'm not the business. I'm an NGO. And they

agreed, given up front. This is how this product was born. I see

because while giving out branded products, Victor, we found that

people were they were not hungry anymore, but there was no

difference in the medical condition. If they had no loss of

weight, they still had loss of weight. That bad skin, that's

still bad skin, to any medical condition, nothing happened. So

they were not hungry anymore, but they were still showing the

repercussions of malnutrition one form or another. And I said, No, I

was feeling bad, because I'm the one who designed this program, and

I'm thinking, I put all this stuff in the mind. Nothing happened. Any

case, I put it at the back of my head, 2004 I February, write up by

the UN and different write ups to say the biggest problem in Africa

is lack of iron, iodine, folic acid, protein, you know, and

certain micronutrients still back of bed. I visited Malawi, we have

an office in 2004

April. I went there for fertilizer and garden projects in agriculture

development, because I met somebody from Malawi in 2002 at my

stand. So I went to the company, thinking, I'm going to learn about

fertilizer and seed roll out, which they do in Malawi. The last

day of second, last day of my visit. He takes me to his factory,

and I get the smell of food. I said, oh, where's the fertilizer

smell? You said, We don't only do fertilizer. We do food also. We

were the first company that extruded soya for the World Food

Program when Mozambique and refugees came into Malawi for

seven years, we ran the program for 24 hours a day. I said, You

never told me that about food. You said, yes,

my spiritual teacher told me, my son, remember in life that

whatever you do is done not it's not done by you. It's done through

you. You will be shown you will be given direction, but everything

will be done through you. You do nothing. So don't sit on your

faith ego and said, I did it because you do nothing. So that is

God who is in charge, God. And this is a classical example,

Victor. I got up on Friday morning the 16th of ninth of April, you

know, sorry, 16th of April. That morning before I left Malawi, and

it came to me, my food parcel made no impact on the people I'm here

in this company that does food program. I need a formula, and in

my head, a formula came in the morning. I'm not a dietitian. I

didn't go for nutrition lectures to medical school. Most of the

time I wasn't even there. My professor said, you passed by

correspondence, I remember, and this formula

came Malawi's got the best ground nuts, one of the best ground nuts

in the world, the best aflatoxin. Let's take it. What's got soya?

What's got protein and essential amino acids, is soya, but soya

don't have a good taste. Combine the ground nuts and soya together

and put in a vanilla flavoring, and put in the a pre mix that has

all these other micronutrients, copper, magnesium, selenium, you

know, antioxidants, put it together, and we started fidgeting

with it, and eventually we came up with a product that works for

twofold. It has no preservatives. And we said, we'll make it ready

to eat. You open the bottle and you eat. No cooking, no heating,

no refrigeration, you just eat. It. Perfect for disasters. When

you come into a prom where there's water all over, like in Pakistan.

Now we're using it in Pakistan also where you can't get you can't

throw a primer stove, you can't throw rice, you can't throw other

kind of stuff. You have to put a whole lot of ingredients together.

This thing is energy dense and nutrient dense, meaning that one

spoon has more potency than whole plate of food, and you don't do it

for profit. No, this is for a given out for free. For when you

return, we continue our very, very interesting and untold story of

Doctor imjea Suleman, Chairperson of the gift of the givers, you

stay with us.

You.

Welcome back. You're watching politics house call here on SABC

two, and today we're having a one on one discussion with the doctor,

mts sudeman, Chairperson of the gift of the givers. Now you're

still telling us about this brilliant product. What is it? I

said it looks like peanut butter to me. What is it? Basically, it's

a paste. Yeah, it's a paste. It's a paste. So you put it on red, you

put it on bread. You can, I said it's ready to eat. The best way to

eat it the catcher is you got to stir it well, because there's no

preservatives. The oil set of settles at the top from which your

energy comes. So you need to stir it well. But you can eat it. It

tastes like an Indian sweet meat. Okay? Patients in hospital love

it. You know, normal people love it. Sick people love it. Okay?

It's got a very pleasant taste, it has a good smell, a lovely taste,

and, you know, it's very palatable, and it's very high in

energy, as I said, energy dense and nutrient dense. You've got the

patent on it. Well, we haven't put a patent on it because we don't

mind if other people do something similar, because we want people to

benefit from the product. Absolutely. In any case, we

started using it for disasters. In the process, we found it has

magnificent results in cases where people are debilitated, so in TB,

in HIV, in AIDS, in cancers. In other conditions, it's not a cure.

People must understand this is not a cure. This is a supplement. It's

a food item that works exceptionally well in many

conditions. Many hospitals in South Africa are using it. You

know, we've used it in Haiti, in Gaza, in Niger, where there was a

severe famine, in Somalia, in Sudan, in Pakistan, in South

Africa, Malawi, risotto and Botswana, not huge quantities, but

people are seeing the value of which maybe Charity begins at

home, do you spend most of your resources, most of your time, on

South African projects, than you do on continental and

international projects? Or you just respond on demand? It's not

necessarily that you are first a South African entity that might

have to look at other countries if you've done justice to the South

African needs.

Internationally, our projects are disaster response, mainly, okay,

21 other projects take place in South Africa. I see the span is

more than 70% 70 to 75% in South Africa, and other 25% depending if

there is a disaster, there may be three disasters in one year, like

what happened to the Pakistan earthquake. The tsunami finished.

Then came Nigeria famine, and then came to Pakistan, earthquake, that

can happen, but sometimes they may be no disaster. When I say no

disaster, nothing major that needs to be responded to, because then

again, we can talk about it as if there's times, in this case, you

do some of your cold projects, you know, but those projects in South

Africa continue all the time. We've got a counseling service,

marital problems, abuse, you know, HIV, AIDS counseling and face to

face that runs 24/7 the whole year. Then we have life skills

programs in school. Our bursary and scholarship program started

off in 97 20,000 Rand a year. For the first year, it's now reached 3

million. And we partnered method University, simply because of

this, for development in Africa, where we said, let's support

science and agriculture. Lots of young people say today, science

and agriculture is for the farmers. It's for the Boro people,

the South Africans. It's not for all of South Africa. Africa is

dependent on agriculture. The Ministry of Economy in Africa is

agriculture. We need to take the students and put them back there.

So I went to the University. I said, I'll give you a grant for

1.3 million. Use the money to do marketing to the schools and tell

us kids to come. They said, in the first year, we may not get good

students. I said, I understand that a business doesn't make money

in the first year. It takes five to six years before it makes

money. So I said, get me any students. Just bring the students

and bring them inside. You have the criteria. You choose them.

They said, We got kids with 50% 55% and not so many. I said, it

doesn't matter. I'll find those kids all the way to qualification.

I said, in the second year, we'll do a little better. In second

year, kids put better symbols came. In the third year, they got

kids with a grades aggregates, and they said, now we're getting

oversubscribed. And people started getting, you know, all

distinctions in the course, and they're getting shot by different

parts of industry. We need to support science and agriculture.

Agriculture is very important for Africa. And what I like about that

university in marysburg, it got like a mini NEPAD there. In those

classes, there are students from all over Africa. In some

departments, there are 39 PhD students. They're coming with the

knowledge of what's happening in Rwanda, in DRC, in Kenya and

Uganda. Now, can you imagine if you take all the resource

properly, when you say, okay, in Uganda, this works that doesn't

work. In Kenya, this works that doesn't work, and you take all

that knowledge together and don't leave it in the library, take it

and implement it. Can you imagine what a powerhouse Africa will

become? And that's something that very rural development and poverty

relief are some of those things that you concentrate on in South

Africa. Does it help, or is it an advantage that you're a medical

doctor running this organization? It helps a * of a lot. It helps

a * of a lot. Because, for example, the hospital that we

designed, we were instrumental in designing a hospital without

medical knowledge. You couldn't do that this supplement. It was

inspired.