Fill the Cup

The core communication strategy in this campaign involves lending the voices and faces of well-known Ambassadors Against Hunger to share information and to encourage participation in overseas development assistance.

"Fill the Cup" works to engage children and others through the entertainment (sense of play) that sports provides. For example, as Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)'s World Player of the Year and a key player in Italian soccer club AC Milan's line-up, the Brazilian-born athlete and Ambassador Kaká uses his international profile to put the spotlight on "Fill the Cup". Through a partnership with the city of Milan (which has made world hunger one of the key elements of its campaign to secure the World Expo), WFP launched the campaign in Italy. As part of this presentation, Kaká dedicated a February Milan-Siena match to "Fill the Cup". A banner carried around the pitch (soccer field) by children was designed to remind spectators that "You don't play with hunger". This is also the slogan for the public service advertising (PSA) starring Kaká, which may be viewed in English or Italian.

Celebrities are also drawing on the mass media to get the word out. For example, the United States (US)-born actress Drew Barrymore, also an Ambassador Against Hunger, talked about her visits to Kenya on television shows such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and in various magazine interviews. (She also has raised funds to provide meals for schoolchildren through a celebrity auction of her own photos, and donated US$1 million of her own money to WFP's operations in Kenya).

The internet is the central means of enabling people to donate funds for this effort. Click here to access the dedicated page on the WFP website.

Children, Hunger.

According to WFP, it will take approximately US$3 billion per year to feed all 59 million children who go to school hungry worldwide; US$1.2 billion can provide meals for the 23 million children in 45 of the neediest African countries.

WFP provides school meals to approximately 20 million children each year in developing countries at the cost of 20 Euro cents (US$0.25) a day. This work is based on the fact that food is crucial to physical and mental development. WFP contends that the provision of a meal in school encourages economically poor families to send their children to class. One Ambassador Against Hunger, Paul Tergat, had to walk 3 miles to school as a hungry child in Kenya. Once he started to receive school meals, according to WFP, "he had the energy not only to get to school but also to concentrate on his lessons. The long-term pay-off is that he became a world famous athlete - and world marathon record holder." President John Agyekum Kufuor has said that school feeding has helped Ghana to stay on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the first of which is to halve hunger and poverty by 2015.