Sticking a fork in hunger

 

 

Coming face to face with hunger is disturbing -- and that's exactly the point of a series of television ads and billboards now on view around New Mexico, the second hungriest state in the nation.

 

An elderly man sits down to eat a can of cat food. A school boy scavenges an orange out of his teacher's trash. A young adult makes "soup" pouring ketchup into boiling water.

 

These are just a few of the images being shown in the Stick a Fork In Hunger campaign ads, which, when coupled with the facts, have a heart-wrenching impact on the viewer.

 

Some of the facts:

 

One in four children in New Mexico grows up in a home without enough food.

One in three New Mexico children go hungry.

One in six New Mexicans is at risk of going hungry every day.

  

"Now that you know, what are you going to do about it?" is the haunting tagline at the end of each ad.

 

The multi-media campaign was the brainchild of Albuquerque advertising and public relations firm DW Turner, which approached the Roadrunner Food Bank about a year ago, offering to donate services to come up with a branding campaign, Melody Wattenbarger, the food bank's executive director, told New Mexico Independent.

 

"Over time, we realized it needed to be less about Roadrunner and more about hunger in a more general sense," Wattenbarger said. "Then, we could partner with a variety of for-profit and non-profit partners to find different ways to get that information out."

 

The result is a campaign "we could make available to people in other parts of the county, in other parts of New Mexico."

 

And it is a difficult message. "We agreed from the start that the message should not shy away from the harsh reality of who is hungry," she wrote in a recent Roadrunner newsletter. "We would be thrilled if other hunger relief agencies put their logo on it and found partners to run it in their areas, like we have here in Albuquerque."

 

"Hunger has a cure. It's called eating."

 

DW Turner garnered the volunteer services of several individuals and agencies to help produce the campaign, including voice-overs by actor Jeff Bridges. Comcast Cable is running the ads through the end of July. The billboards will be up until the end of the year.

 

"I think DW Turner has created something that will have a huge impact, not just in Albuquerque, but beyond," Wattenbarger said.

 

All of the ads and billboards, along with facts about hunger, can be found at StickaForkInHunger.com.

 

 

 

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Blog, Poverty