Fruit juice helps send children to school

Boonchai Songthumvat, MS EMgt’76, and his food scientist wife, Nuchanart, started Nuboon Co. in 1992 to manufacture fruit and vegetable juices, coffee and tea and was the first of its kind in Thailand to pasteurize fruit juice.

They quickly realized that they could support area children with the foods they produced and formed a foundation in 2008 to help poor rural children in Thailand stay in school. The foundation provides financial support to families and meals to their children in exchange for a promise from the parents to keep their children in school.

“We think the most valuable social investment is in human education, particularly in children’s education,” says Songthumvat, who earned a master’s degree in engineering management from S&T in 1976.

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