Meet the former BBC cameraman on a mission to supply nutritious food to Gaza

What was it like to cover a war in the pre-smartphone era? As we pose this question to former BBC cameraman-turned-social entrepreneur Peter Henderson, nostalgia takes over. The truth is: there is no one answer. “The first time I was personally involved in covering a war was basically a time when we had to set up a satellite dish and broadcast those pictures live. When I tried doing it on the roof of Hilton hotel in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Defence Forces were quick to stop us and even threatened to arrest us. We had to tread the fine line between keeping people safe while reporting the truth.” And then there was that time when he walked into a meeting of Azanian People’s Organisation in South Africa when everyone began to stare at Peter and scream, “Burn the white guy!”

“I walked up to the microphone, which was on the podium and said, ‘I am a part of people too.’ I told them that I may not have been a part of the group but had done more for the liberation movement as a visual journalist than anyone else. A woman publicly embraced me and managed to walk me off the stage. She took the personal risk of saving my life,” Peter recalls.

Cut to the present, and covering a conflict has become a whole new ballgame. Peter says that is primarily owing to the fact that anyone with a smartphone can be a journalist. And as much as you would like to challenge the notion, somewhere we know he is right. Wars today are covered on social media and they are reported from the point of view of the one filming the footage, journalist or no journalist. “It’s a story from everybody’s point of view. There is no right, there is no wrong,” he says.

Today, Peter finds himself returning to the zones he covered so empathetically and diligently through a social enterprise that ensures people in war-torn areas receive nutritious food. Hearing of the concept, the first thought that comes to mind is if those with empty stomachs even care about nutrition. When you go hungry for days and fear for your survival and that of others, food itself appears to be a luxury, let alone anything nutritious. But that’s where the thoughtfulness of Eat-2-Grow truly shines. Every 120 gram food bar is essentially made of dates, oat flakes, spirulina, among other things, and is manufactured in factories here.

When we meet Peter at Khaleej Times’ headquarters in Dubai, he is preparing to send at least 10,000 of these food bars to Gaza as part of Donate 2 Gaza campaign. “A factory in Dubai can make 300,000 food bars in a day, and we have planes and other modes of transportation to deliver them to our partners. The reason I chose Dubai as a destination to produce these bars was its logistical ability to transport food pretty much globally. The next step is in choosing the right partners on ground who have distribution networks. For example, in Afghanistan, WeWorld with Gulzar company is the biggest distributor for the World Food Programme. In reality, logistics have been made easy by technology. In Gaza, the closing of Rafah Border Crossing and other restrictions have made delivery tougher, but the only way to get through is when you align with organisations like Emirates Red Crescent or the Red Cross.”

The gravity of the question we posed earlier is not lost on Peter. He argues that food is not only a means to satisfy hungry bellies, nutritious food can help the younger generations come out of poverty. “Human beings instinctively want to stay where their home is. Displacement is almost always the result of famine, or conflict. When you provide people with tools to be able to stay where they are, there is a good chance they will. When they eat well, they grow well; when they grow well, they learn well, and this allows them to come out of poverty,” he argues.

The Eat-2-Grow Food enterprise took root 18 months ago, and this September, it launched a Track Your Impact app that allows donors to monitor the difference their contributions are making in conflict zones. The idea of tracking the impact was meant to demystify how humanitarian aid is delivered. “I was inspired by my wife, who I was sitting with a couple of months ago. Suddenly, she receives a text message that informs her that her blood is being used in Southampton. The information was empowering and satisfying, and I wanted to do the same for Eat-2-Grow.”

The larger mission, however, is not simply to feed communities but also to empower them to create their own food. “Eight hundred and fifty million people go to bed hungry every night. You cannot simply feed communities because that’s a one-way ticket to run out of food,” says Peter, who is also a Harvard Business School grad . “You need to help people feed themselves. Our project in Zimbabwe enables people to grow spirulina. We have donated close to $100,000 (Dh367,299) on the project.”

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