The fifth annual Menu for Hope food bloggers charity fund raising begins again on Monday 15 December. I’m the host for Asia Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.
If you haven’t heard of the event it started five years ago when food blogger Pim Tchamuanvivit was inspired to raise funds to help after the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia. Menu for Hope was born. The campaign has since become annual and in 2007 raised nearly $100K to help the UN World Food Programme school lunch program in Lesotho. This year we will support to the same program.
How can you help?
If you are a blogger:
Participate in Menu for Hope V by hosting a raffle prize or by promoting Menu for Hope on your blog. The prize you offer need not be expensive, but it should appeal to your readership or perhaps even be something that money cannot buy. To make it manageable Pim has suggested that each prize offered should have the potential to raise at least US$200. That means, don’t offer a prize unless you are pretty sure you could get at least twenty of your readers to donate US$10 for a raffle ticket toward that prize (although in smaller markets including Australia and New Zealand I will give some leeway on this.)
Please think before soliciting prizes from restaurants or producers whom you do not know. A big part of our success in prior years came from the personal connections between bloggers, food producers/restaurateurs/authors, and the readers who donate to the campaign.
Each blogger is also responsible for shipping their prize to the winning donor. Make sure you have enough in your budget to cover shipping. It’s important that you specify where your shipping area will cover when you offer the prize. Frankly, we prefer that you don’t restrict shipping area, but if you must, then please be very clear in your blog post so as not to confuse our donors.
Forward this post to all other bloggers you know so they can participate too.
Here are the local hosts for this year’s Menu for Hope:
Europe and the UK
Sara of Ms.Adventures in Italy (sara.rosso@gmail.com)
US: West Coast (If you are closer to SF than you are to NY then you belong here.)
Matt Armendariz of Matt Bites (matt.armendariz@gmail.com)
US: East Coast
Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen (jaden@steamykitchen.com)
Canada
Meena Agarwal of Hooked on Heat (meena@hookedonheat.com)
Asia Pacific, Australia, New Zealand
Ed Charles of Tomato (edcharles@mac.com)
and, last but not least, our special Wine Blog Host
Alder of Vinography (alder@vinography.com)
If you’d like to participate, please send your prize information (plus two images 75×75 thumbnail and 200×200px which I can help with if you are not sure) to your local host so that they can give you a prize code (important!) and more instructions on what to do for Monday.
If you are a restaurateur, winemaker, author or food producers/sellers:
Consider offering your products and services as raffle prizes. If you have a corportate blog, you can host the prize yourself. If you don’t, find a food blogger to host your prize. If you don’t know any, contact me, I’ll see what I can do.
If you are a food or wine/drink blog reader or a food and wine lover:
Check back on Chez Pim on Monday December 15 when the campaign goes online. You can browse our amazing array of prizes by type, or find a prize near you by searching by region. Bid on as many prizes as you’d like. Buy raffle tickets as holiday gifts to your loved ones.
Help us help the WFP end world hunger.
Check out Pim’s launch post here.
Become a Facebook fan. Follow me on Twitter.
{ 5 trackbacks }
{ 0 comments… add one now }