Kelly McJannett was on a train backpacking in northern India when she saw the sight that would her crystallise her life’s mission.
At 24 she had already worked with Indigenous communities in remote outback Australia, but it was travelling through this seemingly endless slum in Rajasthan and seeing such stark poverty that made her realise she needed to make change on a global scale.
“In big cities of third world countries you are always going to have a circumference of poverty, but I had never seen an Indian slum before,” the Food Ladder International CEO says today. ”It just went on and on. It was a shock.
“I specifically remember the number of children and the look on their faces. I was totally alien in their world. In a place like the slums of India I may as well be from a different planet, when the truth is I am just extraordinarily lucky to have be born with opportunity.”
After returning home, McJannett realised she would need to create a solution that would be both environmentally and economically sustainable to help address the pressing global concern of food security.
Through her contacts, she got in touch with experienced businessman and renowned social entrepreneur Alex Shead and together they created what is now Food Ladder.
The organisation uses commercial hydroponic technology to deliver innovative greenhouse growing systems to disadvantaged communities, both in Australia and abroad, as well as providing training to allow locals to run production themselves.
The customised artificial environment can grow healthy food like spinach, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs, with improved agricultural efficiency – up to five times greater than traditional methods.
Each venture typically creates between five and 10 jobs and the aim is to run them as sustainable social enterprises, with the food eaten or sold depending on local needs, McJannett says.
One major Australian project is at Katherine in the Northern Territory where the local Indigenous community is now able to grow more than 70,000 plants a year – nutrition-rich vegetables which would otherwise need to be trucked in at great environmental and economic cost.
The rollout is currently expanding into remote Indigenous communities in East Arnhem Land.
The international deployment has projects at different stages of development in India and Afghanistan and is funded through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Direct Aid program.
“We really believe in creating sustainable economic development which empowers local people to address the issues in that community, in perpetuity,” McJannett says. “It may sound like common sense, but Food Ladder has always approached development with strong business acumen and cutting edge technology to help support communities around the globe.”
The current Indian projects include five greenhouse systems housed on the flat rooftops of disadvantaged village schools in Uttar Pradesh to maximise space and provide fresh produce for over 2000 local school children.
McJannett travels to India about four times a year and has just returned from opening another project in a village school just outside Delhi.
“We are in a position where we can be working hand-in-hand with governments, aid organisations and serious impact investors that, like us, are committed to creating sustainable change,” she says. “In the slums, each day is life or death.”
Growing up on Sydney’s northern beaches, conversation around the family dinner table centred on issues of social justice. At 14 McJannett also had her first extensive overseas trip, backpacking through Europe, Asia and the Middle East with her parents and younger sister.
“Travel is always a humbling and enlightening experience,” she says. “Having that global insight at that stage of my life was pivotal and it had an impact.”
In recognition of her work, McJannett, now 30, was also recently the recipient of the Sydney University 2016 Anstice MBA Scholarship. There she met and impressed the Head of National Australia Bank’s innovation hub NAB Labs with her vision and ability to effect sustainable social change.
NAB Labs has since built the Food Ladder website as part of NAB’s program of skilled volunteering.
“They have done a beautiful job,” McJannett says. “It’s been wonderful through their input, insight and energy to help us create the online presence and reach that we need.”
Since 2002, NAB’s Australian employees have contributed more than a million volunteer hours to community projects, generating $50 million in salary value.
NAB’s general manager, corporate responsibility, Jodi Geddes says she is “immensely proud” of their achievements since the inception of the program.
“Every year we work with more than 400 community organisations to advertise over 22,000 volunteering activities,” Geddes says. “We are humbled to be recognised as a leader in corporate volunteering across Australia.
“Food Ladder is a NAB customer and we admire the work they do in food sustainability within communities in Australia and abroad.”
“Our volunteers can provide invaluable assistance to build further capacity within community organisations and deliver critical work where it’s needed most.”
For McJannett, her Food Ladder journey has been “a four-year overnight success” and she is grateful for the support the organisation receives. “We are constantly evolving and growing to meet the need,” she says.
“I hope that looking back we will have been instrumental in changing the way aid is addressed globally and driving economic development in disadvantaged communities. We want to be the cornerstone in a new way forward.”
