Nu Skin employees give back with educational gifts

Nu Skin employees say that the greatest perk in their job is being able to help other people in a way that can really be seen and felt.

Wednesday, employees at Nu Skin's Provo headquarters -- from the top brass down to the regular joes -- took time to prepare literacy kits bound for Utah County's neediest, as well as desperate orphans in Malawi, a landlocked country in southwestern Africa.

The global neutraceutical company has long been determined to change the world, and for that reason it established the Foundation for Good about 10 years ago.

The foundation has served millions of meals to malnourished and impoverished children who are on the brink of death.

"I love knowing that I'm part of that because it makes my job seem like more," said Nu Skin employee and volunteer RaLyn McManus as she watched pallets of supplies being plastic-wrapped for shipping.

The event took place in the park to the east of Nu Skin's Provo headquarters. Hundreds of employees took one-hour shifts working at tables putting education kits together. Inside the kits were basic school supplies and what is expected by many to be a treasured gift: a book.

In all, employees prepared nearly 10,000 kits that included books, paper and pencils.

Former Nu Skin vice president Sid Henderson and his wife, Joyce, spent six months in Malawi working to educate an impoverished population on everything from basic literacy to agriculture techniques. Sid continues to work around the world to help eradicate some of the most devastating poverty on earth.

"Realize that the books you send will be the first book that child will ever hold, let alone own," Joyce told the employees.

Provo mayor Lewis Billings also addressed the employees.

"We are richly blessed, and if we continue to share a portion of that we will continue to be richly blessed," Billings said.

Nu Skin's Nourish the Children program supplies meals for nearly 166,000 malnourished children every month.

Giving for Nu Skin employees is both a pragmatic and an altruistic activity.

"We're a marketing company. ... It's hard to motivate yourself to go out and sell another bottle of lotion. It's hard work," said foundation director and Nu Skin executive Steve Lund.

His solution to that problem: Attach yourself to something good. Lund says that by helping people in need, it makes the hard work of sales more meaningful.

"It's about more than the economic model," he said.

The company has a long list of philanthropic activities in a number of countries, all working to serving the varied needs of people.

Lund says there are particularly big problems in Malawi. The nation's economy is stalled, people are starving and, in places, famine has been there for so long that many people have lost basic agricultural skills.

According to Lund, Nu Skin, via several programs, has effectively created a micro economy in the country -- funding farmers and building plants to make VitaMeal, a specially formulated meal for extremely malnourished populations.

Programs that come under the Foundation for Good umbrella include the Build a Village Project in Malawi, where 45 to 50 families will come and spend a year learning farming, carpentry and fishing skills.

In Kenya, the foundation has the Opportunity Fund for Developing Countries, which provided clothing, textbooks and school supplies for 100 Kenyan children during the 2007 school year.

The foundation has similar projects in China, North and South Asia, the Pacific, Europe and the Americas.

Nu Skin covers the foundation's administrative costs, so all donations benefit programs directly.

The supplies directed toward Utah County residents will be distributed through the United Way of Utah.