Four students started Why Care Campaign at Auburn last fall, but have expanded it worldwide.
Reaching out to approximately 73 countries, Devin Yeomans, co-founder, Jenni Daniel, co-founder, Anna Kate Mullinix, co-founder and Aubrey Sullivan, co-founder have created this project to raise awareness about hunger locally and internationally.
"The goal wasn't to collect money," Daniel said. "The goal was to spread awareness and really make people truly think about it."
The four women first started the project in their Hunger Studies Capstone class taught by Kate Thornton, director of the hunger and sustainability initiative.
The assignment was to create something that would change the world.
"It was one of those things that we didn't plan it just happened," Mullinix said. "It's one of those things that we could have never dreamed of happening."
The women came up with the idea to spread awareness on the hunger issue, but focused more on asking people a question, not just giving them statistics.
"We realized once we figured out our reason it really empowered us to do more," said Yeomans. "I think by allowing it to be a question made it more powerful."
The Why Care Campaign has partnered with the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Program of the United Nations to reach more people.
The first step of the Why Care Campaign was to encourage people to figure out why they care about hunger through pictures sent to the campaign's social media sites.
"The campaign was actually for World Food Day on October 16, 2012, so everything that we had done was building up to that one day," Yeomans said. "The results were incredible. We peaked at 36,000-person reach on Facebook alone. The days leading up to World Hunger Day we collected over 2,500 photos and counting."
The first step of the campaign had gained the attention of people throughout the world by people sending in their photos of why they care about hunger.
"We had a lot of athletes, Olympians, politicians, Christina Aguilera, a lot of NGO leaders and people from the UN," Yeomans said. "The variation was incredible."
Yeomans said that people gave them varied 'Why I Care' responses.
"You had things that were really deep form people that had seen hunger first-hand and then you had people that were more fluid about it, which is fine," Yeomans said. "They would just say 'I care about hunger because I love bacon and everyone should have bacon.' We had a lot of religious, personal and moral reasons."
The second step of the campaign is a call to action.
"We're trying to get together a 50 million pound food drive, for food banks kind of like Beat Bama Food Drive," Yeomans said.
Mullinix said the issue of hunger did not affect her directly until her mission trip to Honduras last summer.
"This past summer I was in Honduras and there was this little boy that came to the orphanage that I was working at and trying to eat made him sick, which is a primary symptom of starvation," Mullinix said. "It really took on a different face that it was no longer just an issue, but it was a person, a name, a face and a story."
The group hopes to encourage students to volunteer on campus to help out their community and the world.
"They can get involved with Committee of 19, start their own food drive or help out the Campus Kitchen," Mullinix said. 'There are many initiatives on campus that give students the ability to make in different in their community and around the state and the world."
The campaign has grown into something that the women cannot control entirely anymore.
"I'm just really excited to see where it goes," Mullinix said. "It's one of those things that we have some control over it, but when it comes down to it there's really not many of us involved can do to control where it goes and what it does. I'm excited to see what it looks like in the future and how it continues to evolve in the international program."
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