Swedish food ‘exchange’ site raises funds for the world’s hungry

The initiative is called WeFeedback and centres around a website of the same name: wefeedback.org. The idea of the campaign is to “use social media to raise awareness how the food we all take for granted can actually be used as a catalyst to help starving people around the world”.

It also aims to raise funds for the World Food Programme.

“We hope everyone who visits the site makes a donation, but they can help just as much by letting people in their networks know about WeFeedback.org,” said Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, head of web for the WFP in a statement.

The site features a calculator in which people can enter their favourite meal or snack and are then told how many children they could feed if they donated the value back to WeFeedback. For example, one bowl of tomato soup could feed 20 children.

The application is based on the WFP calculation that it costs just $0.25 a day to feed one child.

There is a wealth of follow up information on the site to enable donors to track their funds and also to see the combined contributions of their networks, shared by the use of Faceboook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media tools.

Malmö-based firm The Duffy Agency, is one of the initiators of the site after responding to an approach from the United Nations to help promote the WFP and raise funds around World Food Day, held annually on October 16th.

It is hoped that the personal questions about a user’s likes or dislikes will establish a link between food habits and poverty and to put into perspective just how much we take our daily food consumption for granted.