Yoba for Life: probiotic yogurt for East Africa
The Yoba for Life Foundation helps needy people in resource-poor East Africa in the advancement of health. They do this through the local production of probiotic yogurt, Yoba. Winclove Probiotics supports this initiative by providing the logistics and marketing.
“‘Yoba for Life offers probiotic yogurt in countries where the people can benefit greatly from it. Winclove Probiotics develops, researches, and produces probiotics and wants to be the best company for the world. For us this collaboration is a logical step forward.’”
Tara Corduwener, Commercial DirectorWinclove Probiotics
Promoting health
Probiotic yogurt provides a means of improving the quality of life for population segments that can benefit greatly. The international, non-profit network organization Yoba for Life was founded in 2009, initially concentrating on projects in Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Currently, Yoba for Life is running pilot projects in other developing countries as well.
Probiotic yogurt-starter culture for local entrepreneurs
With external financial support, Yoba for Life provides local entrepreneurs with probiotic yogurt-starter culture and education. The entrepreneurs then use a low-tech production protocol to produce the probiotic Yoba yogurt.
In addition, Yoba for Life assists the local entrepreneurs in the running of their yogurt production companies by means of support in:
- purchasing
- production
- marketing
- sales
- bookkeeping
In this way farmers and small-scale dairy processors learn how producing probiotic yogurt can add value to milk. Ultimately, these companies not only retail their product but also sell to schools as part of sustainable food programmes.
Yoba for Life applying GG
Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG is one of the world’s best-documented probiotic strains, and has been proved to stimulate digestion, strengthen the immune system, and promote intestinal health. And GG is key to the Yoba for Life Foundation’s commitment to improving the quality of life. Upon expiry of the GG patent in 2005, Yoba for Life made this curative probiotic freely available to those who benefit most: those living in economically under-developed countries. In 2020 Yoba for Life enabled roughly 3,500 primary school children and 20,000 pre-schoolers to receive weekly access to healthy probiotic yogurt. Winclove Probiotics not only believes that such initiatives are vital to world health, but is delighted to support them.
Sustainable goals
The Yoba for Life Foundation is an initiative of Wilbert Sybesma and Remco Kort. In 2011, the project was launched with some activities in Uganda; now, throughout all of East Africa, Yoba for life encompasses 250 producers with a total weekly yield of 80,000 litres of GG-based probiotic yogurt. The project has expanded to economically under-developed countries across the globe. The concept creates not only access to healthy probiotic food in under-developed and developing countries, but also jobs and income for hundreds of people and markets for the milk of hundreds of farmers.