Last year food bloggers raised a few grand shy of $65,000 for the UN World Food Programme in what is called a Menu for Hope. The idea is pretty simple, for two weeks every December food bloggers from all over the world promise to donate gifts. Blog readers, bloggers and anyone else for that matter buy raffle tickets for themselves or someone else. Tickets are 'drawn' and prizes allocated to winners. Last year, I ended up sending a box full of Vietnamese goodies from Saigon to some lucky winner in Rome.
Pim of Chez Pim started Menu for Hope after the Asian tsunami on Boxing day, 2004. For the non-mathematicians among you, this will be the fourth consecutive Menu for Hope. This year's show gets going on December 10 and über-foodie Pim will be running things again. This year funds are heading to a school lunch programme in Lesotho,
With a special permission from the WFP, the funds raised by Menu for Hope 4 will be earmarked for the school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. We chose to support the school lunch program because providing food for the children not only keeps them alive, but keeps them in school so that they learn the skills to feed themselves in the future. We chose to support the program in Lesotho because it is a model program in local procurement - buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. Instead of shipping surplus corn across the ocean, the WFP is buying directly from local subsistent farmers who practice conservation farming methods in Lesotho to feed the children there.
