When I first set foot in Kenya, I was filled with wonder and uncertainty about what lay ahead.
Back in 2020, amid the height of the pandemic, the USANA Foundation embarked on a small pilot project with an organization called 100 Humanitarians. This project, known as the Garden Tower, was unlike anything we had ever undertaken.
Our mission was to install Garden Towers for 100 families in the Masai Mara, a region where vegetables hadn’t been grown for centuries. Despite the pandemic, I decided to fly to Kenya to see if our pilot project was a success.
To my amazement, families were thriving, enjoying healthy vegetables for the first time. It was an incredibly emotional experience that I will never forget.
A Trip of a Lifetime with Unforgettable People
Fast forward to 2024, I returned to Kenya with four of our Chairman’s Club members, Helen Song and her husband, Fabien Ghys, Vivienne Lee and her husband, Alex Tai, as well as Kevin Guest, the Executive Chairman of the Board of USANA. The excitement was palpable as I anticipated their reactions to the progress made in the Masai Mara and surrounding areas.
From our initial 200 Garden Towers, we have now expanded to over 15,000 across Kenya!
Over the next six days, we visited several communities that welcomed us with celebrations of singing, dancing, and open arms, brimming with gratitude. We witnessed Garden Towers flourishing with healthy vegetables and empowered families embracing new challenges to improve their lives. The children’s joy at our visit was contagious, and the spirit of hope was profound.
This was our first year kicking off the Chairman’s Club program. Our objective was to show these wonderful people the vision of the Foundation’s mission of creating sustainable food solutions and how that could manifest in developing thriving communities even in harsh conditions.
We wanted them to understand how their generous donation was being used and to have an experience to take home and share with their friends, family, and USANA teams. It was wonderful to see them interact with the families and their children. There is such an innocence about them, and our impact of just showing up and demonstrating our love and care for them made a huge difference.
The Legacy of Generosity through Chairman’s Club
These amazing Associates even lugged extra heavy suitcases across the country to provide much-needed dental supplies for a new clinic that was opening soon. They brought a few toys and some treats for many of the kids we visited, but the most important thing they brought was their willingness to serve and open their hearts to these people.
One major highlight of the trip was visiting a well that the USANA Foundation funded to preserve for a community so they could have critical drinking water and water for their Garden Towers.
It was overwhelming to see the more than 400 people who came out to greet us and celebrate this official opening. It only took walking a few hundred yards down a rough road, scaling down a muddy mountain, and cutting through villages to get to the water—something they experience every day of their lives to get just what I can get by walking into four different rooms of my house.
Another exciting event was visiting a community where, because of the hard work and dedication these families put into being good stewards of their Garden Towers, they were able to receive chickens so they could benefit from fresh eggs. It was such a privilege to hand these chickens to each one of these people and see the excitement in their eyes. It meant everything to them.
Garden Towers: Symbols of Hope and Flourishing
This trip represented everything we are trying to accomplish throughout the world, providing tools that create healthy food and hope for additional self-sustaining empowerment to families around the world.
This is what the Foundation stands for. This is what our team is passionate about. This is truly another significant way of expanding Dr. Wentz’s vision of creating the healthiest family on earth.
It was so awesome to see these Chairman’s Club Associates partake in service, participate in cultural ceremonies and experiences with the locals, connect with these beautiful people, and view the incredible land that Kenya offers. They even had a chance to go on safari game drives in the beautiful Mara. We were privileged to witness something that the safari guides had never seen before—a pride of 22 lions passing between our jeeps.
Our hope is that we can continue to increase the support through the Chairman’s Club and other initiatives in the Foundation so that we can impact more families and make eating healthy foods a reality.
I am deeply grateful for these wonderful Associates who took time out of their schedules to serve and see the wonderful work the USANA Foundation is doing.
