"Picture yourself sitting at a table," Mark Moore, founder of MANA Nutrition, says. "Take your phone and slide it right to the edge. Now if something bumps the table, your phone will fall and crack."
For children born in South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this is everyday reality — born on a nutritional cliff. A small bump — corruption, bad roads, bad weather, a rainy season — and they fall. Mark's life work is moving children away from that edge, back to safety.
After nearly a decade as a missionary in rural Uganda, watching children die from severe malnutrition, Mark founded MANA Nutrition in 2009. Today, it is one of the world's largest producers of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) — fortified peanut-butter packets — distributed through partnerships with UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and USAID. More than 10 million severely malnourished children in 57 countries have benefited, with 95% regaining health within six weeks and sustaining recovery.
Not every hungry child needs MANA. "It's for kids who've ceased to be hungry because of the deficiencies they face," Mark explains — children so depleted they've lost the hunger signal itself. In that loss, he sees a deeper metaphor. "The biggest problem of our culture is that people are so malnourished spiritually that they've ceased to be hungry." He credits this to a "cotton-candy culture" — one that keeps us full but never truly fed. Busy, stimulated, entertained — but starving underneath. But Mark reminds us that the real danger isn't hunger — it's losing the capacity to feel it.
Mark's own spiritual hunger found nourishment in adolescence — through a youth pastor just five years older to him, at a small church in Flint, Michigan. It carried him to Uganda where he spent a decade as a missionary and development worker. And it drives MANA today. "We don't do these things because they're great humanitarian acts," he says. "We do them because Jesus told us to."
In his book Nourish: A God Who Loves to Feed Us, Mark traces a long reversal in the biblical story — from ancient civilizations trying to feed their gods to a God who insists, again and again: You don't feed me — I feed you. Jesus is born in Bethlehem (the "House of Bread"), laid in a manger (a feeding trough), declaring himself the bread of the world. And when the disciples urge him to send hungry crowds away, he answers simply: You feed them.
Today, Mark travels to refugee camps in South Sudan and Congo, speaks on TED stages, and leads what he calls a "not for profit, not against profit — but for meaning" organization. He holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a doctorate from Vanderbilt University. He served as a legislative fellow in the U.S. Senate earlier in 2008. A CNN Champion for Change, Harvard Kennedy School fellow, and Unreasonable Institute fellow, he lives in Charlotte with his wife Marnie and their four children.
Looking back, Mark points not to achievement, but to blessing. "I don't believe that any work I do at MANA — with the UN or with TED — will ever supersede what I was already blessed to be. A missionary wandering around Uganda. I've stepped as high as I'm gonna step."
Join our past-guest Sister Marilyn Lacey (Founder, Mercy Beyond Borders) in conversation with this missionary missionary-turned-social entrepreneur inviting us to nourish one another — body and soul.
