Unilever Extends Project Sunlight to Combat Childhood Hunger This Holiday
Just in time for Thanksgiving, Unilever’s Project Sunlight has partnered with SheKnows Media and digital literacy platform Hatch to launch a campaign that aims to increase awareness of the child hunger plight in America, which affects more than 16 million kids.
Project Sunlight launched about this time last year, making a commitment to sustainable living so that today's adults have something to hand down to their children.
“There is no doubt that our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan is ambitious,” Marc Mathieu, SVP Marketing, Unilever told brandchannel.
The video below—a collaboration by the three partners—illustrates how to teach children the practicalities of shopping for a week’s worth of groceries on $36.50, the average amount of money Americans living in food insecure households have for seven days of groceries.
“We have been very open about the fact that we cannot make all these changes on our own: we need to work with our suppliers, with other companies, NGOs, governments and so on to make this happen," Mathieu added in an interview. "And Project Sunlight is launched with this very much in mind: we need to work with people, with consumers, if we have any hope of achieving our goals for a more sustainable world.”
Giving children a voice in the process is a logical extension for a major global company that depends on continuing the food chain of products from one generation to another. Nonetheless, Unilever has come to personify the phrase, "philanthropy as the new marketing," coined by Twitter founder Biz Stone.
Building on their substantial sustainability profile, the consumer packaged goods giant recently launched video series, #BrightFuture Speeches, highlighting youths' ideas on how to address food poverty.
Project Sunlight asks for "acts of sunlight" that can translate into aid for millions of children through partnerships with the World Food Programme, Save the Children, UNICEF and Feeding America.
To date, nearly 149,000,000 acts of sunlight have been given. Now, the goal is to turn Black Friday sunny with an outpouring of generosity over Thanksgiving.
