Making the difference between hunger and hope: Yum! to launch world's largest global public-private hunger outreach initiative

Nation's Restaurant News,  Oct 15, 2007  

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Consider this ... every four seconds someone dies from hunger around the world, most of them children. And yet just one dollar per day will feed five children for a year. While hunger is invisible to many, it is solvable.

That's why Yum!, the world's largest restaurant company, is joining forces with the World Food Programme (WFP), the world's largest hunger relief organization, to stop the dying and start the living. Yum!'s goal is to save the lives of 500,000 children in the coming year by raising the world's awareness of the hunger issue and mobilizing its billions of customers and over one million employees around the world through their contributions and volunteerism with local hunger relief organizations.

Yum! Brands, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver's and A&W restaurants and WFP are joining forces to create the first World Hunger Relief Week from October 14-20, 2007. World Hunger Relief Week is a week-long series of activities around the globe aimed at raising awareness and much-needed funds for the WFP, the United Nation's ftontline agency in the fight against global hunger. One-hundred percent of the money raised is going directly to the WFP's areas of greatest need. This includes helping WFP expand its feeding programs to serve more children and families; provide essential food assistance to new mothers and their infants and increase school attendance among girls by providing necessary food rations as an incentive.

"Our objective for World Hunger Relief Week is to make a difference in the world by leveraging the power of Yum! across the globe to address hunger," said David Novak, Yum! Brands' chairman and chief executive officer. "We can create a movement to end world hunger such as the world has never seen and demonstrate the power of teaming together for one purpose and one purpose only-to save lives."

Over the past year, Yum! executives visited two poverty-stricken areas, Sudan and Guatemala. and saw the needs firsthand. Jonathan Blum, Yum!'s chief public affairs officer since the company was formed in 1997, and Brian Riendeau, Yum!'s vice president of government and community affairs, both traveled to Sudan where they saw some primitive villages where chronic malnourishment has become a way of life.

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"We saw people starving in front of our eyes. Life expectancy is less than 35 years. Their only hope was the World Food Programme and we concluded we must do something about this global problem," said Blum. In spite of the horrors they witnessed, Blum said they came away feeling uplifted because they saw hope for getting people out of the cycle of poverty.

"In exchange for food, the villagers work and become self-sustaining. They are given skills and tools to farm, build roads and wells and schools and health clinics," Blum reported. "We left Sudan recognizing it is both our privilege and our responsibility as the world's largest restaurant company help the Wodd Food Programme with their mission," added Blum.

When Blum and Riendeau returned from Sudan, they shared all the great work the WFP is doing and David Novak asked that he and his team, along with their spouses, go to a WFP site to witness this work firsthand. Novak, Blum and other executives and their spouses traveled to Guatemala and sew the WFP's work in action in a town that a hurricane had destroyed two years before. The WFP built a compound with communal areas and established schools and daycare centers.

Yum!'s World Hunger Relief Week movement has three components: awareness, volunteerism and fund-raising.

Yum! will drive awareness through television ads, public service announcements and point-of-purchase materials in their restaurants around the world.

[he volunteer portion of the campaign will create volunteer activities all around the globe for World Hunger Relief Week. The activities will involve Yum! employees their families and customers.

Yum! will also raise funds through special restaurant canisters at KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's and A&W Restaurants around the wodd (no purchase necessary). Donations will also be rung up on the cash register, and will be on the customer's receipt and wire transferred at some restaurants. In addition, customers can visit www.fromhungertohope.com to make donations and learn more about world hunger. Mario Fetz, director of the private donor relations division for the World Food Programme, said that the relationship with Yum! promises to be an excellent match. "What's very important for us is the need to bring more awareness of world hunger. Yum! can reach one million employees and billions of customers, We are very exalted that we can touch so many people." he said.

David Novak summed it up best, "Individually, we can make a difference. Collectively, as the world's largest restaurant company, we can make a significant change and leave the world a better place than we found it."

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