Menu for Hope III
Every year, Food Bloggers from all over the world get together for a fundraising campaign. We call it 'Menu for Hope'. Last year, we raised $17,000 to help UNICEF.
This year, Menu for Hope III raises funds to support the UN World Food Programme, which provides hunger relief for needy people worldwide. To us Food Bloggers, food is a joy. On our blogs, we celebrate food as a delight or even an indulgence. Unfortunately, for many others who share our world do not share that privilege. For them, food is a matter of survival. This "Menu for Hope" is our small way to help.
On our Menu this year is a great list of amazing food related prizes. We hope that they will entice you to give whatever you can, and with some luck you can win unique and wonderful food gifts offered up by food bloggers from around the world.
The rule is pretty easy. For every US$10 you donate, you may claim one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. The more you give, the better your chance to win.
We have plenty of great prizes, including a chance at a meal of your life at the renown Tetsuya's in Sydney, the 2-Michelin Starred Manresa in California, Iggy's in Singapore, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in London, and more. We offer unique experiences, such as a chance to have coffee with Thomas Keller, or even a cup of tea with Harold McGee. There are also lots and lots of cookbooks, including signed and hard to find items. Also on offer are plenty of goodies from all corners of the world, scrumptious tours, and many other delicious experiences.
Ok, enough intro already, let's get to the fun stuff, shall we?
The Prizes are listed by category. Feel free to click on any category to jump directly there. Roll your mouse over the thumbnail photos to see prize code and description. Click on a photo for more details.
Have a meal of your life..
Delicious experiences..
Feasts for the eyes: books and more..
Tasty treats..
Cooks' tools..
Drink yourself silly..
Or you can jump to the donation instructions.
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A brief history of Menu for Hope.
The first campaign got its start right after the Tsunami hit Southeast Asia. I asked a few food blogging friends to help me raise funds to support the Tsunami survivors in Southeast Asia, the region where I am from. We raised about $2000, online and off, for the Red Cross.
The following Christmas, I decided to do another campaign, and to have it as an annual fundraising event. It was my way of using a very successful -if usually frivolous- blog to do some good for a change. This time, I asked more friends in the food blogging community to get involved. We chose UNICEF as our beneficiary. The food bloggers kindly provided food-related prizes, which vary from the very quirky tea-with-me prize, to gift certificates to fancy restaurants, to gift baskets from Italy, France, and Persia, to cookery books old and new. The campaign was promoted only on the food blogs. Our readers were asked to give a donation, each $5 of which earned them a virtual raffle ticket toward a prize of their choice. Over 80 food bloggers were involved in the campaign, and together we raised the total of $17,101.32 for UNICEF. The amount we raised blew all of us away. Even more amazing than the total amount was the fact that we managed to reach it mostly on 5 to 25 dollar donations.
The success of the campaign illustrates the power of the web of connections that the internet helps create between people from all over the world. The food bloggers involved came from many different countries, and many of the prizes celebrated our diverse food cultures: one food blogger in Italy pledged a basket of local specialty from her small village in Tuscany, a Malaysian blogger gave a rare Nonya cook book. The same diversity was also reflected in our donors, who also came from nearly every continent. This campaign was truly grass root. None of us had any experience with fundraising, save for a few small campaigns we had here and there, but nothing that came anywhere near that scale. Our intention was to do our small bid to help a great cause, and we proved that even little bits could add up to an amazing sum.
This year's Menu for Hope is our third campaign is scheduled to run from December 11-22. This time we are raising funds for the UN World Food Programme. What better cause could food bloggers support than the WFP? This year, over 150 food bloggers have already pledged to help, and we will offer nearly 200 food related prizes from all over the world. Besides the involvement from the bloggers, the WFP itself is helping us promote this campaign through their own channels. Together we hope to raise at least $25,000.
A note about dealing with the donated funds: on the previous two campaigns, we used a company called First Giving to collect the funds. The company processed all the donated funds and forwarded them directly to the recipient organization. Not even one dollar has passed through our hands. We are using First Giving again this year, and to show their appreciation for our continued patronage, the company has agreed to decrease their commission by 25% for our Menu for Hope III.