Cari Amici (Dear Friends),
I met fellow blogger Sara Rosso in Florence, Italy, in April 2008. Her blog is called “Ms. Adventures in Italy” and she writes beautifully about food and shares great images too. Sara is currently the “Host for Europe” for a special program to fight hunger around the world. It is called Menu for Hope.
This is a fund-raiser in the form of a raffle, with bloggers worldwide offering prizes for your enjoyment. I just found out about this project and decided to jump onboard.
My Prize for you (Code: EU25):
Art Images of Italy: 6 giclées of Florence and Venice
Printed on thick quality (Arches Infinity textured) watercolor paper using UV pigmented inks for longevity.
The long dimension of each image is 10 inches (about 25 cm).
Valued at over $200.
Plus, I will ship worldwide from Florence, Italy.
Details on how to bid are listed below . . . but hurry, bidding ends 24 December 2008!
The Programme
In the interest of time, I want to quote Sara:
This year’s beneficiary of Menu for Hope is the
UN World Food Programme. WFP is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good.
With the success of last year’s campaign to support the school lunch program in Lesotho, we are going to continue our support to the same program. During the duration of Menu for Hope V, we will be posting updates from the kids and the farmers we supported this past year.
If you weren’t around last year for Menu for Hope 4, let me explain a bit about why we are supporting this particular program. 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.
Who Collects the Money?
NOT the bloggers! We use a very good online fundraising company called Firstgiving, who has worked with us since the first Menu for Hope years ago.
Donors can make an online donation with a credit card. Firstgiving collects and processes the payments and, at the end of the campaign, transfers the donations in one lump sum to the WFP. This is a win-win situation for all parties involved. The bloggers never touch the money. The WFP don’t waste overheads on processing mini-donations, the majority of which were between $10-$50, that’s a whole lot of tenners to make up $90K. Firstgiving does all the work and collects a small fee, which include the credit card processing charges.
Last year, Firstgiving gave back 1% of the total amount raised in lieu of a discount on their processing fee. Thank you Firstgiving, we appreciated it very much!
Donation Instructions:
1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at
http://www.msadventuresinitaly.com/blog/2008/12/15/menu-for-hope-europe-prizes/ or
Chez Pim
2. Go to the donation site at www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope5
and make a donation.
3. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize
of your choice. Please specify which prize you'd like in the 'Personal
Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation.
You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize
code.
For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets
for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02
4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box
and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.
5. Please allow us to see your email address so that we could contact
you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with
anyone.
6. Bids on prizes will be accepted from December 15-24th. The last day to bid on a prize is December 24th.
7. Check back on Chez Pim on January 12, when Pim will announce the result of the entire raffle. Sara Rosso will also announce the winners of European prizes here.
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