Sometimes good things can come from bad situations.
When US based food blogger, Pim Techamuanvivit, witnessed the devastating 2004 boxing day tsunami in Southeast Asia, she felt she had to do something to help.
Techamuanvivit, came up with an ingenious plan to help support the UN World Food Programme by starting her own campaign, the Menu for Hope.
The Menu for Hope campaign, which incorporates bloggers from all over the world, has held virtual raffles every year for the past five years and has raised over $250,000.
The way it works is that you have to donate $10 and for each $10 donation, you earn a virtual ticket to bid on an item of your choice and at the end of the two week long campaign, the tickets are drawn and the results announced on Techamuanvivits' blog,
http://www.chezpim.com on January 18, 2010.
And of course, anyone can enter.
Other bloggers such as Ed Charles from Australia have joined forces with Techamuanvivit and have provided gifts for the raffle in the Australia-Pacific region via his blog,
http://www.tomatom.com.
This year, the campaign which runs from December 14-25, hopes to raise awareness for the new UN World Food Programme (WFP) initiative, Purchase for Progress (P4P).
P4P enables low-income farmers to supply food to WFP's global operation by improving their farming practices and dealing with the farmers directly, therefore giving them more money in return for their produces.
By doing this, P4P hopes to help strengthen the local economy by creating jobs and income.
Menu for Hope has also joined the WFP's, Billion for a Billion campaign. With over one billion people chronically hungry worldwide, Menu for Hope hopes to be one of the billion, ready to make a difference.
A raffle ticket could be a good be a nice Christmas gift, even if the recipient doesn't win, you've given a gift of joy, to someone out there, after all, isn't that what Christmas is all about?
Tickets are up for sale on
http://firstgiving.com/menuforhope6