After MANA Nutrition’s Winnebago, nicknamed the “Manabago”, exploded on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., Mark Slagle and Alex Cox partnered with MANA Nutrition, which helps starving children, once again and launched Good Spread Peanut Butter.
According to Indiegogo.com/goodspread, Good Spread Peanut Butter will use all of its profits to provide MANA’s therapeutic food, which when given three times a day for four to six weeks, can revive a child on the brink of death.
Good Spread Peanut Butter is made with organic honey and natural sea salt. Slagle said Good Spread Peanut Butter is not only great because it tastes good, but it also helps save lives and that is why he and Cox decided to work on this effort.
“Good Spread got started because we needed something bigger and better than the Manabago … not just to be bigger and better but to be more sustainable,” Cox said. “We wanted something to give people so they wouldn’t just donate money to a cause and then turn around and forget about it all the next day.”
Slagle and Cox are currently using a website called Indiegogo to try and raise $65,000 in two weeks, which will help make 100,000 packets of Good Spread Peanut Butter. People who give money on the site will receive preorders of the peanut butter and other awards. But, if they do not meet their goal everyone keeps their money and Good Spread Peanut Butter gets nothing.
“The hardest part, on one level, is investment,” Slagle said. “We believe that if people really believe in Good Spread, then some amazing things can happen, starting with saving malnourished kids.”
Since MANA Nutrition liked their idea, they let Slagle and Cox use their factory in South Georgia to produce their product, according to Indiegogo. World Vision has also agreed to act as their implementation partner and help deliver the MANA generated through the sales of Good Spread Peanut Butter.
“The dream, and ultimate goal, of Good Spread is to provide more therapeutic food to more severely malnourished kids,” Slagle said. “We think a creative/delicious way to do that is by turning America’s craving for an awesome, health snack into a life-saving therapeutic food for the malnourished world.”
According to Cox, the company was started specifically to create a scenario where everyday purchases can help provide MANA to children under five years old in malnourished regions of the world.
Slagle said Harding students were a vital part of the Manabago story and that they would not have gotten far without them, but their story is far from over.
“We desperately need to bring in these $65,000 or Good Spread doesn’t happen,” Slagle said. “We have a ton of faith in the student body and faculty at Harding, and we’re confident that good will continue to spread there.”
