CosmA – Vitamin A-enriched skin care oil

Students4Kids: About 80 teams have submitted a project idea to this year’s competition of Students4Kids. The jury decided that your project is among the best. What do you think makes your project so special?

Judith Wollmershäuser: CosmA is innovative and ingenious. It combines something fundamental – namely breastfeeding – with an improved supply of vitamin A starting from the day a baby is born. The oil also has a positive effect on mothers and makes breastfeeding more enjoyable for them. Another goal of ours is to sensitize and educate the public on hidden hunger.

Hidden hunger is a problem with far-reaching consequences and a variety of causes. How did you come up with your specific idea against hidden hunger in Uganda?

Both of us met almost six years ago in Uganda, where we worked as volunteers for an NGO. During that time we experienced the country’s challenges at first hand. Both of us feel very closely connected to Uganda and would like to actively help improve the nutritional situation for its people.

You have until August 26th to work out your idea to a finished concept. What’s the work on that like for you? Are you all working together on the concept or have you for example split up the different tasks?

The collaboration is going very well. It’s not only exciting, but also fun. Since we are such a small team, we mostly work together. But each of us also has very unique skills allowing us to distribute some of the tasks. We complement each other quite well.

The winning team of the Students4Kids competition will receive 10,000 euros as start-up funding for their project. What exactly would you do with the money?

We would use some of the money to produce the first batch of the CosmA oil in a hospital in northern Uganda (the first project location) and to pay for some smaller, but necessary investments. The other part of the funding would pay for the educational work (at the clinic, but also beyond that) to spread the word on hidden hunger and introduce the public to preventative measures against it.

You have done a lot of research on the topic of hidden hunger. What did you learn that you may not have known before? What do you think everyone should know about the phenomenon?

We wish for more public awareness on the extensive consequences of hidden hunger and on how important a well-balanced diet is for the development of children as well as the long term and sustainable development of an entire country.