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Not living by bread alone
By posterboy , Oct 25 2006. Viewed 2856 times.

By Andrew Hickey
Ulster County Press
Give a man a loaf of bread and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to make the bread with local labor and grains, and help him open his own bakery, and he’ll not only eat forever but he’ll help nourish South African communities struck hard by AIDS.
It’s a simple plan hatched by two local men – a Bearsville baker and a retired anesthesiologist from Manhattan – to take their talents, connections and desire to help those less fortunate and create the South African Whole Grain Bread Project (SAWGBP).
Known locally as the owner of Bread Alone, Dan Leader and retired physician Neil Ratner and his wife, Leann, of Woodstock, launched the concept from Ratner’s kitchen.
“Through Dan and his expertise we’re creating this whole grain bread product,” Ratner said of the plan where the first leg is for the South African city of Durban. “Most people (in South Africa) eat this bleached, non-nutritional government-sponsored white bread.”
SAWGBP is working with professionals to develop a whole grain bread that is designed to accommodate the additional nutritional demands of people with AIDS, Ratner said.
Simply put, the plan is to create a nutritional bread, build bakeries in South Africa and teach locals there how to make the bread and let them run the shop.
And the SAWGBP plan itself is already drawing international attention, Ratner said. Leader and the Ratners were one of 16 new businesses awarded a cash prize in late September at the 2006 Business in Development Challenge held in Holland.
“We are honored to have been chosen as one of the prize recipients of the 2006 BiD Challenge and to be the first Americans to ever win,” Leader said of the £5,000 award. “This will allow us to bring this business idea to reality with plans already in progress for our first two bakeries.”
Ratner said SAWGBP already has an existing bakery outside of Durban that has agreed to start baking the whole grain bread. Leader is scheduled to travel to South Africa in November to teach that crew the formula, and they will begin distributing the product.
Then, Ratner said, the plan is to build their own bakery with help from Sun International – the largest resort developer in South Africa.
“(Sun International) has agreed to partner and build a bakery for us,” he said. “Thirty to 35 percent of the profits are going to go to places where it’s needed.”
All the while, SAWGBP will employ local labor and bakers will make bread with locally grown grains and will provide a good business model for other South African entrepreneurs.
Both Leader and Ratner have histories of lending their talents to the African continent. Leader has done work as a consultant in South Africa and Ratner has done everything from running clinics in the bush to mending Kenyans injured in conflict.
The two connected when Ratner read an article on Leader’s international efforts in the Woodstock Times. Both were inspired by the tale of Nkosi Johnson, a South African boy infected with HIV from birth and who spent his short life fighting for the rights of the HIV positive. After becoming the poster-child for caring for AIDS sufferers across the world, Nkosi and his foster-mother, Gail Johnson, opened up a series of “Nkosi's Havens,” care centers for women and children with AIDS.
“He became the poster-child for de-stigmatizing AIDS,” Ratner said. Nkosi succumbed to an AIDS-related illness in 2001.
With a few of his South African connections coming into town, Ratner and his wife contacted Leader and the SAWGB quickly transpired.
”It’s got a momentum of its own right now,” Ratner said of the plans rapid progress.
Now, he said, in the wake of their international recognition, Ratner said the group is working on drumming up support for its work and organizing itself into a non-profit organization for tax purposes.
Future plans include trademarking the flour mix they use for the whole grain bread and getting it into existing bakeries and maybe eventually creating a high-end, whole grain bread to sell around the world to benefit the bakeries of South Africa.
To learn more about the South African Whole Grain Bread Project, visit www.sawgbp.org.

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