Malou Van Meijl

YEP period 2022 - 2024, batch 26

YEP Role

Fiber Foods is a start-up that develops fair, gender and planet friendly food value chains in Uganda, that are 100% market driven. The first value chain that we are focusing on is of young jackfruit, that we source from smallholder farmers and process into fibers with small processing companies in Uganda. The fibers are being shipped to the Netherlands, where they are being used to create meat substitutes.

I am working at Fiber Foods as the strategic project manager. In this position, I am responsible for the development of the social and environmental standards, such as gender, as well as its implementation, often in the form of training. It also includes the management of applied research projects, for example on living income and organic agriculture. I am thereby in charge of managing the weekly sourcing of several tons of young jackfruit from smallholder famers.

Skills

• Critical and practical thinker
• Knowledge brokering
• Quantitative and qualitative research skills
• Organisational and communication skills
• Team player

Background

• Nationality: Dutch
• Education:
  • MSc Nutrition and Health – Wageningen University
  • BSc Nutrition and Health – Wageningen University

Experience before YEP

• 2021 – Strategic Project Manager at Business Lab Uganda/Fiber Foods
• 2018 - 2020 - Knowledge Broker at the Food & Business Knowledge Platform (nowadays called the Netherlands Food Partnership)
  • Content manager of the Knowledge Portal and coordinator of Food and Nutrition Security Excellence Programme, a programme for students in collaboration with Dutch Embassies. Supported the Food & Business Research Programme, which included organising the final conference and country workshops together with the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
• 2017 - Intern at the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
  • Qualitative research on mother-child double burden of malnutrition in households in Uganda.
• 2016 – Thesis at Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (Rwanda)
  • Quantitative research on diarrhoea and stunting of Rwandan infants in association with water, sanitation and hygiene.