reprinted with permission from Ashburton Guardian

May 2007

With the help of New Beginnings Community Trust a Non-Profit Charity Organisation - www.celebrationcentre.com - our vision is to assist and strengthen communities globally, to reach all nations. Establishing relationships, feeding the hungry, education, health, business and farming. If you would like to contribute to Mighty Mix Children Relief you can do so at any National Bank.

No donation is funding administration and every cent goes to the orphans!

January 2006

Since going to print Christine has decided to change the charity that distributes the RawDry Nourish, and now Friends of Rusingas Orphans Widows Group feeds 40 of the most needy orphans, from the Agiro School, lunch each school day; for many this is likely their only meal of the day. If you would like to contribute to the Mighty Mix Children Relief you can do so at any National Bank of NZ.

No donation is funding administration and every cent goes to the orphans!

It is a long way from the splendid isolation of the upper reaches of the Rangitata River to the orphans of Africa, but Christine Drummond is successfully spanning that gulf and in the process giving hope to children in a poverty-stricken part of Kenya. Richard Worrall uncovers the story of one of Mid Canterbury's unsung humanitarians.

The South Island high country has long been a breeding ground for remarkable women, and Christine Drummond definitely fits the bill.

The normally publicity shy Christine owns Erewhon Station with husband Colin and packs a lot into her life as a high country farmer, successful businesswoman, humanitarian and talented artist who can handle a team of Clydesdale horses as well as any man.

As if to prove the point as I arrive at Erewhon Station, Christine is busy discing a paddock with the help of seven hefty Clydesdales, well wrapped up against the swirling wind in a weather-worn leather jacket, gloves and hat.

The trusty farm workhorses are on a crash fitness regime in preparation for a week-long trek around the high county with fellow members of the local Clydesdale club.

While tilling the soil amongst the high peaks of the Upper Rangitata River is a task Christine relishes, more often than not her thoughts will be focused half a world away in Kenya and to be more precise Rusinga Island on Lake Victoria near the border between Kenya and Uganda.

There she is helping fund a remarkable project to transform the lives of the islanders, which have been blighted by Aids and poverty, through financing programmes to improve the lives of orphaned children on the islands and help raise the living standard for many other people living there as well.

Christine is working with Mercy Mission Kenya and Community Initiatives and Social Support Organisation (CISSO) to help support 84 orphans and their guardians on the island where two thirds of the population are orphans, single mothered cared children or widowed women. There are an estimated 1.5 million orphans in Kenya with 60 per cent of children orphaned due to HIV/Aids related deaths that claimed the lives of their parents and this number is expected to grow to two million by 2007.

She supplies her own dietary supplement to the children, NZ RawDry Nourish, along with paying for supplies of maize, beans and bread as well as two milking goats that are bringing essential fresh milk the babies need, according to Christine.

Her generosity has not stopped there. She bought enough material to allow all 25 school aged children amongst the orphans to go to school as well as sewing machines to allow the guardians to make the uniforms. She has also paid the school fees for two high school and five lower primary school children.

All this humanitarian assistance Christine is providing to Rusinga Island would not be possible were it not for the coincidence of two events years apart - the big snow storm that swept Canterbury and Marlborough in 1992 and a chance meeting with another member of the Clydesdale Club.

In 1992 Christine and Colin were managing Ben Hopai Station in Marlborough. When the snow storm struck the couple were called in by the army to help snow rake in the blizzard-struck backblocks of Marlborough to rescue stranded sheep.

The couple, together with their team of mustering dogs, worked solidly for three weeks until one of their main bitches collapsed and a veterinarian said it was due to poor diet.

Calling on her background training in naturopathy, Christine set about developing a better, more nutritious dog food based around the core ingredients of green lipped mussels, garlic and flax seed flour which is rich in Omega 3, 6 and 9.

Four days after she began feeding their dog with her new formula dog food, the animal was much better and Mighty Mix Dog Food was born, spurred on by other farmers who were astounded at the remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of her own dog.

Pretty soon she was making up batches of her new dog food and making tonnes of the product at home. "Farmers wouldn't let me stop making it and one farmer then wanted to sell it."

Eventually the business became so big she and Colin quit farming for six years, moving to Renwick on the outskirts of Blenheim to concentrate on running Mighty Mix Dog Food with the product sold directly to farmers via a network of distributors rather than through retail outlets.

Today, a dedicated factory and four staff churn out thousands of tonnes of Mighty Mix each year which comes in a variety of forms including station biscuits, rectangular biscuits, frozen concentrate and kibbled mince, supplying hundreds of customers nationwide.

In 1998 the couple had made enough money to contemplate a return to farming full-time and when Erewhon Station came up for sale in 1998, they jumped at the opportunity to buy the property.

Having purchased the historic station, they installed a manager at their Blenheim dog food factory, although Christine is still in charge of running the business from the farm.

The final piece of the aid to African jigsaw fell into place when Christine met Lois McGir at the annual general meeting of the Clydesdale club.

"She told me about her daughter who had just come back from working in Kenya and how there were so many children dying of hunger. The stories she told were really heart wrenching."

The images of starving children stuck in her mind and got Christine thinking about how she could help. "I told Lois that I would do everything I could to help and asked for more information on the situation in Kenya. I was sent some photos and couldn't sleep, I just had to do something. I had no peace of mind at all."

She decided to assist with food relief and set about developing NZ RawDry Nourish, a food supplement that can also be mixed with water and eaten as a soup. It is designed to assist sick children to digest normal food and because it is freeze-dried, it is quick to get into the blood stream.

Finding a reputable agency in Africa to channel her efforts through was the next major challenge and after an extensive search found the Mercy Mission, a relief agency that works in a number of countries around the world.