World Food Program Launches Viral Video Contest

The World Food Programme calls on students, would-be filmmakers and any other interested folks in the web universe to put their creativity towards raising awareness about hunger through a unique, international competition.

The World food program has launched an unique and international contest. The contest invites filmmaker, of all kinds, to fir up their creative energy and raise awareness about hunger. “For those of us doing the day-in, day-out backbreaking work of getting food to hungry people, it’s sometimes discouraging how few people understand that hunger stalks and kills a child every five seconds,” said Nancy Roman, WFP Director Communications and Public Policy Strategy, admitting that this competition, The competition called Hunger Bytes[ is an open effort to raise urgent attention to a global problem that is often ignored. The idea is to stir it up and the WFP has produced its own 30 second video to show entrants how far they can go to achieve this goal. The clip shows competitive eaters wolfing down hotdog after hotdog played out in slow motion before reminding viewers that “850 million go to bed hungry every night …Share.” Those who want to enter can submit their video to the WFP and five most compelling clips, between 30 to 60 seconds in length, will then be let loose on the web through YouTube. The winning video will be the one that receives the most views by World Food day, October 18, 2008. Entrants are encouraged to use for example, Facebook, MySpace and blogs. The video that gets the most views by World Food Day - October 16, 2008 - will win. The winner of the contest gets the opportunity to visit and film one of WFP’s relief operations.