WER launches 'Be a Good Egg' Campaign in run up to Easter
Howard Lake | 1 April 2009 | News
This Easter, World Emergency Relief (WER) is encouraging children and families in the UK to turn one chocolate Easter egg into 150 real eggs to help poor families in Africa.
Poor nutrition is an ongoing problem in impoverished areas of rural Africa. Families and particularly children struggle to find reliable sources of food. With this in mind, WER is funding the purchase of laying hens with money raised through its ‘Be a Good Egg’ campaign.
For just £6.00, the cost of a typical chocolate Easter egg, WER can purchase laying hens that will lay up to 150 eggs each, per year, giving an African family a sustainable source of protein. Some of the money raised will also fund larger chicken and egg laying projects, each with hundreds of laying hens established to serve small communities or orphanages. Through these projects, enough eggs are produced to feed the children, with many left over that can be sold to raise funds for additional livestock, agricultural equipment and even pay for teachers salaries and children’s education.
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Alex Haxton, Director of Operations at WER explains: “We work with many projects and communities in developing countries, and having laying hens is one of the simplest and quickest steps towards self-sufficiency in terms of both food and income.”
According to the British Retail Consortium, an average of 80 million Easter eggs are sold in the UK each year. If just one in every 5000 people donated the cost of one of their Easter eggs, WER would be able to purchase 12,188 hens, which would lay over 1.8 million eggs between them per year.
So far over 150 primary schools, scout troops, brownie packs and church groups all over the country have signed up to the Be a Good Egg campaign. In total over 10,000 children nationwide are taking part.
The campaign has been devised to appeal to children and families, with an interactive website www.beagoodegg.com where a FREE fundraising kit can be ordered. This kit contains egg-citing challenges, egg-straordinary facts, terrible yolks and loads of chickens. There’s also a craft kit for turning an egg box into a Be a Good Egg collection box, egg-citing fundraising ideas and egg-spress recipes. All it takes is a little hen-ergy!
Ends.
March 2009
For further information please contact:
Caroline Hudson
PR & Communications
World Emergency Relief
20 York Buildings
London
WC2N 6JU
Tel: 0870 429 2129
Email: ca******@we****.org
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.