Menu for Hope.

Menu for Hope.

For the fifth year in a row food bloggers around the world are participating in a giant fund-raising effort for charity. The campaign launches today, December 15, and runs until December 24.

Last year the campaign raised almost $100K for the United Nations World Food Program. This year we want it to be even better!

This time around the beneficiary will again be the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). Specifically, it will go once more to the school lunch program in Lesotho.

You can read more about the campaign at Chez Pim, the website of Pim Techamuanvivit who began the whole thing five years ago.

It works like this. Raffle prizes (food related of course) are offered by food bloggers all over the world. One raffle ticket costs $10 (that is US dollars, so about $15 Australian, or ₤6.65 or €7.5 as of today’s rates). You buy the raffle tickets online. You can buy as many raffle tickets as you like, for as many different prizes as you like. The instructions on how to bid are below, but first I want to tell you about the prize I am offering.

I am going to donate a copy of my book The Pie: A Global History. It will be out by mid-March, so the winner will have to wait patiently until then, when I will post it to them wherever they are in the world. If you like my blog, think the WFP is a good cause, and think it might be worth risking US$10 on a raffle ticket for my book, then please buy one – or three! or more! Of course, you can bid on as many other prizes as you wish.

The code for my prize is AP01. You will need to use this number if you want to bid on my book.

Here is what you do:-

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at http://chezpim.com.

 The master list of prizes is at http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2008/12/menu-for-hope-2.html
2. Go to the donation site at http://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.

P.S The list of prizes offered specifically by bloggers in the Asia Pacific, Australia, New Zealand region is at Ed Charles’ blog Tomato.