When I was a medical intern, I worked in a malnutrition ward in Zambia's largest hospital. On my first day, a two-year-old child was admitted. Let's call him John. John and his mother came from George Compound, one of Lusaka's poorest townships. As I was examining him, John started crying, but no tears came because John was so dehydrated. His hair and his skin were pale. His eyeballs were sunken and his skin was peeling. These were all signs that John had acute malnutrition. After a few weeks of treating him and achieving catch-up growth, John was discharged. But to my horror in just two weeks, John was brought back with the same symptoms. John opened my eyes to the many malnutrition cases the hospital was faced with. It turned out hundreds of children were brought back to the malnutrition ward like him, time and again. I studied researching why this was. I learned that 90% of these children were coming from the poorest townships of Zambia. I began asking them questions. I met one breastfeeding mother, called Natasha, whose answers were typical. She spent every day selling charcoal at the local market to feed her family of five. At breakfast, she fed her two-year-old baby, one corn fritter, and a nutrition-free starch juice meant for local grownups sold by another vendor in the market. How can I afford a nutritious meal when we're barely surviving? She asked me. I came to realize that thousands of mothers in the community needed actionable answers to this very question. And I felt sure that these women could be nutritionally well if only they had access to the right information, including the simple message that vegetables are cheaper than fritters and nutrition-free starch drinks. Disfelling the common assumption that nutritious food is expensive food. Their troubles seemed so needless and with consequences far beyond health. Malnutrition is both a global and economic problem, draining $3.5 trillion from the global economy. Now, imagine an economic fallout in Zambia where nearly half the population are unable to meet the minimum calorie requirements. And third of children under five are stunted. We can repair roads, bridges, ports, but we cannot repair brain cells damaged by poor nutrition. Motivated by these discoveries, I formed the 2030 nutrition project. With a mission to eliminate malnutrition at household level and save millions of dollars in health care. At local clinics in poor townships, we partner with pregnant and lactating mothers teaching them skills on how to reduce the risk of stunting a low-bethweight babies. Using locally produced vegetables, fruits, millet, sugar, and milk, we explain to them that better nutrition means better breast milk, which is free and nutritious for their babies. It made sense to also teach these women how to grow vegetables at home. So we teamed up with students whom we trained as nutrition ambassadors, and a local farming organization and began providing tools, seeds, and training materials for participating mothers to learn home gardening. Now, nearly 100 of these women grow their own produce with a huge improvement in their children's health. During the pandemic, we bought their surplus produce to feed 5,000 children in schools that had shut down their school feeding programs. And we also trained the children to grow their own fruits and vegetables. Now 10 schools have their own vegetables, patches. So far, we have empowered 6,000 community members. Our plan is to expand to 9 other provinces and reach 30,000 women and children by the year 2030. This is my attempt to solve this problem, but you too can be a part of the solution. Reach out to struggling households in your community, volunteer at a food bank, or start a vegetable garden in your backyard. And lastly, appreciate the food that you eat. You are blessed every time you eat a healthy meal. Thank you.