WFP's Facebook page recently passed the 100,000 fans mark, an important milestone, but not still not enough for a mission as important as ending hunger. Join us on Facebook!
This weekend, we crossed the 100,000 fans mark on Facebook. It’s an important milestone and we’re excited to be connected to so many great people. But it’s still not nearly enough. Ending hunger is the single most pressing issue of our time. Hundreds of millions of lives hang in the balance—lives we can save. Every single person on Facebook needs to know that.
ROME -- Why should the UN’s frontline organization against hunger care how many fans it has on Facebook? Surely there are more pressing things to worry about, like the millions of people who will go hungry this year because we don’t have the resources to help them.
The answer is simple. While close to a billion people will go to bed hungry tonight, 750 million more will login to Facebook to catch up with their friends, play games and find out what’s going on in the world.
Most, if not all of them, probably agree that hunger is a problem. Many, if not most, would do something about it if they could. But only a tiny fraction of them are able to hear us when we tell them they can and that it’s easy.
WFP is the largest humanitarian aid organization in the world. We feed around 100 million people every year—around 1,000 for every one of our fans on Facebook. We work in more than 70 countries, in some of the most remote and dangerous places on Earth. When disaster strikes, we are among the first to arrive.
That’s why we care about how many fans we have on Facebook. Because each time that number grows, we have a new opportunity to tell someone who can make a difference about the work that we’re doing and the help that we need.
If we were a soft drink company or sold sneakers, the solution would be simple. We could give away lots of free stuff and spend a bunch of money on advertising. But as an agency funded entirely through voluntary donations, we simply can't do that.
If you’re reading this, it’s because you didn’t need advertising or giveaways to know that it is wrong for nearly a billion people to be hungry. Your friends and family and co-workers probably don’t need any of that either.
But they do need to know that we’re here. And we need your help to tell them.
So take this article, share it with everyone that you know and tell them that the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency is waiting for them on Facebook.
