Meet the team – The Yeheb Project

Dr Muna Ismail, Founder and Chair of Trustees

Dr Jose Prieto Garcia, Principal Investigator

Lewis Wallis – Patron of The Yeheb Project

Lewis Wallis studied Agriculture at Wye College in Kent, part of the University of London, in 1960. He went on to farm in Sussex and later took a Diploma in Tropical Agriculture and worked as an assistant agricultural manager in Dominica, growing bananas, coconuts and hybrid varieties of cocoa. During this time he also visited Trinidad and Guyana.

Lewis’s work then took him to Africa where he worked in Swaziland as a settlement officer and manager of citrus, rice and sugar cane plantations. His final posting was as New Business Development Officer world wide for British Investment International.

He has had a life-long connection with the Initiatives of Change movement in the UK and on visits to India, Ukraine and Poland. In 2015 he met our founder Dr Muna Ismail and encouraged her conviction to return to her homeland and see what had happened to the landscape of the Haud Plateau that she had known in her youth. Lewis, Muna and Scott took part in a scoping mission in May and June of that year, which marked the start of the project.

The board of trustees unanimously agreed to ask Lewis Wallis to act as Patron of the charity, in recognition of this pivotal role.

BSc in Agriculture, Wye College, London
Diploma in Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad

Dr. Muna Ismail – Founder, Chair of Trustees, Research Scientist

I am committed to see the yeheb plant restored along with traditional knowledge of its use, in the Haud areas of Somaliland and in the Somali inhabited areas in the Horn of Africa. This can be of great benefit to communities that are affected by food insecurity and lack of a reliable source of income.

I was led to to global movement for Initiatives of Change at a time when I needed to do some personal changes in my life that could also have some bearings on my outlook of the wider current global issues. The standards of the movement are values that resonate with my upbringing and which have great influence on how I relate to the world at large.

My family used to own a couple of farms near Mogadishu, Somalia and from a very young age I was aware of the natural environment around. An interest in trees and flora was something that was also actively encouraged in my childhood; particularly during school summer vacations when I used to visit my grandmother who had lived in Hargeisa, Somaliland. During my university education I developed a keen interest in natural product chemistry which culminated in my doctoral research on plant-based active natural compounds.

In late April 2015 my team-mate Lewis Wallis encouraged me to come up with a plan and a budget for an exploratory trip to find out about yeheb and its indigenous knowledge base within the pastoralists in the Haud areas of Somaliland. In mid-May 2015 a team of three of us made that trip to Somaliland. We discovered that yeheb had disappeared from the landscape of Haud and that its disappearance may have been symptomatic of wider land degradation in the region. On our return we wrote a scoping mission report and this was the real beginning of The Yeheb Project.

BSc (Hons) in Applied Chemistry
MSc in Chemical Analysis
PhD in Pharmacology and Phytochemical Analysis

Scott Darby – Trustee, Soil Scientist

I have an interest in sustainably increasing food production and availability in a manner that enhances biodiversity and increases food security. I believe that reintroducing Yeheb to Somaliland can achieve this.

I encountered Initiatives of Change (IofC) through School for ChangeMakers which is a young person’s training program that is associated with IofC.

I started working on this project at the start of 2015 but I have been planning with the founder, Dr Ismail since the summer of 2014. I could see that there was great potential in Yeheb to significantly improve the lives of a great many people and after many months of sharing ideas with Muna, I made a commitment to get to Somaliland and make a difference on the ground.

I have always had an interest in nature and the environment. Even as a child I would play outside in the woods or in my garden. The final push towards work in land restoration and helping people came from my faith. I felt inspired by the following quote about our global community:

‘The believer is not the one who eats his fill when the neighbour beside him is hungry.’

It is our personal responsibility to ensure that everyone on the planet has the same access to the fundamental necessities of life such as water and food that we enjoy here in the UK.

BSc in Environmental Science
MSc in Arid Land Studies
Editor for Land restoration: reclaiming landscapes for a sustainable future (Academic Press, 2015)

Francis Evans – Trustee, Civil Servant

I studied agriculture fully intending to have a career in farming, although events took a different turn. Throughout my time as a government official I have maintained an interest in agriculture and especially the role of trees in farming (agroforestry). I am fortunate to live in an area of the UK with mixed woodland, pasture and orchards, where this is a long-established practice.

I met Lewis, Muna and Scott through the charity Initiatives of Change where I was a volunteer and (for a time) Trustee. When Muna shared her conviction about the yeheb plant I found this inspiring and wanted to support the project in whatever way I could.

As I studied different projects and institutions, to understand where the Yeheb Project fits in, I became increasingly convinced that smaller people-based charities have an important role alongside respected global agencies such as World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF). In fact, this connection between the personal and the global is a guiding principle of Initiatives of Change. In my role as charity trustee I am seeking to make the Yeheb Project effective and efficient, while keeping personal relationships of trust at its core.

BSc in Agricultural Science
Dissertation in agroforestry systems

Dr. Jose Prieto Garcia – Principal Investigator

Jose M. Prieto Garcia, MPharm, PhD, MRSC, FHEA is Assistant Professor in Natural Products (Phytochemistry) at Liverpool John Moores University.

Dr Prieto is the Course Leader for the MSc in Natural Products Discovery at the Centre for Natural Products Discovery in the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences at LJMU.

Dr Prieto read Pharmacy (1993) and obtained a PhD in the field of topical inflammation. His Post-doctoral research activities include the EU funded projects ‘Insect Chemical Ecology’ (Pisa, Italy) (2001-2004) and “Medicinal Cannabis” (School of Pharmacy, University of London, UK) (2005-2006). He was then appointed as Lecturer in Pharmacognosy (UCL School of Pharmacy) where his research focuses on elucidating the effects of medicinal plants and natural products on skin conditions (inflammation and cancer), Herb-Drug Interactions and the application of advanced techniques (Direct NMR, Artificial Intelligence) to the chemical analysis and biological effects of complex natural products.

Dr Prieto has supervised more than 10 PhD dissertations, authored over 60 original papers and chapters in books, has been advisor to the British Medicines Agency, is active consultant to the Herbal Industry and member of several editorial boards.