Getting started!

Hello! I will be writing my blog to share with you the updates of my internship from my home (Brescia’s Residence) in London, Ontario.

It is officially the first week in the internship and I it was exciting for me to know that Aimee, one of our Rwandan partners and the legal representative of the NGO Living With Happiness is currently in Canada completing her Masters!! Such a good luck, right? This means I will get the chance to meet her possibly (fingers crossed for that) and potentially have many cross-cultural activities and conversations with her. Yay!

We are now in the phase of agreeing on the communications means that are suitable for both parties. We are also in the goal-setting phase.

Even though the specific goals have not been set yet, my internship will be directed towards innovating a new probiotic-based non-dairy food product and exploring the solutions that can get the University of Rwanda ‘s kitchen running. The rationale behind developing a probiotic-based non-dairy product is to provide a highly nutritious option for people suffering from milk allergy or lactose intolerance and can not consume the probiotic-based yogurt. Also, we need a more readily-available product that people in Rwanda can consume and does not need any special conditions (Ex. refrigeration) to be preserved. And it goes without saying that this product has to be highly nutritious as the chronic malnutrition status of the population, especially children is very high. In fact, according to a recent report published by the National Institute of Statistics in Rwanda, 38 percent or 661,200 children under 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting or low height-for-age).

My newly-developed product will be geared towards the past intern’s past work. I will be building on their past work. For example, one of the past interns developed probiotic-based legumes and pulses, and even though the viability tests were promising, the consumer impressions were not explored yet.

I, personally and professionally, prefer developing a new non-dairy product from scratch and advance it throughout the whole eight steps of the New Product Development process, but with COVID, we still do not know if that would be possible.

More to come! Will keep you in the loop.

Esraa