Food Insecurity
Global Awareness Challenge
Many of our most vulnerable neighbors face unnecessary challenges and difficulties, all while struggling to get enough food on the table. But solutions exist — and you could be the key to helping unlock one.
What is a Global Awareness Challenge?
Humanitarian causes and nonprofits that solve our communities' toughest problems rarely have the resources needed to put together high quality marketing and materials that would ignite their deserving causes.
The Global Awareness Challenge is an opportunity for the world's maker community — designers, developers, podcasters, videographers, writers, and more — to create projects that can dramatically improve the efficacy of the work done by many nonprofits all at once.
All projects will be released under a Creative Commons license for nonprofits all over the world to use, so that we can all work together to tackle the biggest problems our communities face.
What kinds of projects can I submit?
What you create is up to you: Want to build an interactive microsite? Create a mini documentary? Design a protest poster or infographic? Have other ideas on how to spread awareness? We can’t wait to see! To help spark your creativity, we have included prompts and example project ideas under Step 2: Ideate, Collaborate, Create.
What will be the impact of my project?
Each day, people across the world face hardship from hunger to violence, addiction to persecution. This is a chance to use your skills and dive deep into issues that impact a significant part of our population. You can use your creativity and passion to make real change and tell a story that engages and supports others.
The resources that you create will be made available to all nonprofit organizations around the country and the globe, including those in the Make a Mark network. By using your skills, you will be helping nonprofits spread awareness as they work to solve some of the biggest problems in our world.
Submissions are published under the CC0 1.0 Universal license.
Additionally, for each submission, Imperfect Produce will donate 10 pounds of produce to Farming Hope, and Hungry Harvest will donate 10 pounds of produce to growingSOUL.
Why me?
These issues are complex, and while many organizations across the globe are working hard to solve them, they need support. By contributing your own unique perspective, insight, and ideas, we have a much better chance of solving these problems as a unified community.
Who do I work with?
You can work on your project as an individual or a group. You can work with friends, coworkers, your partner or even your mom! You can also seek out a nonprofit that may be able to guide your project or be a part of your team.
Who can participate?
Any creatives across the globe, whether or not you have participated in a make-a-thon in the past. We encourage designers, developers, podcasters, videographers, copywriters and any other storytellers, ideators, builders, and makers to submit a project.
I have more questions.
Send us an email with any questions you have to hello@letsmakeamark.org.
Step One
Read the article
For the challenge, we worked with a panel of experts to prepare the resources you need to dive in on food insecurity. The first step of participating in the challenge is to read the article.
» Read the article
Step Two
Ideate, Collaborate, Create
You can work on your project as an individual or a group. You can work with friends, coworkers, your partner or even your mom!
What you create is up to you: Want to build an interactive microsite? Create a mini documentary? Design a protest poster or infographic? Have other ideas on how to spread awareness? We can’t wait to see!
» Read the prompts
By tackling some of the myths, misunderstandings and complexities associated with food insecurity and those facing hunger, we can start to solve the problem. Feel free to use the following prompts to inspire and drive your project, or come up with your own.
Prompt 1: Hunger is a complex issue with many different groups being impacted. We should have a better understanding of those dealing with hunger most often. How do we tell the stories of individuals better and give them a platform to share their voices?
Check out the Center for Hunger-Free Communities and its Witnesses to Hunger program.
Prompt 2: Many people aren’t making enough money to buy nutritional food and even government assistance programs are only helping some ‘get by’ on a month- to-month basis. How can we be better advocates for improvements to these systems?
Read about USDA programs and then check out MIT’s Living Wage Calculator.
Prompt 3: A lack of nutritious foods can lead to serious health issues like obesity, slowed brain development, mental fatigue and chronic disease. How can we communicate the serious, long-term implications of a poor diet?
Read more at Children’s Health Watch and Reuters Health.
Prompt 4: Applying for and maintaining SNAP benefits can be a complex process and not understanding it can lead to a lapse in benefits. What can we do to ensure that all individuals in need of this service are able to receive and maintain it despite its intricacies?
Learn more about SNAP.
Prompt 5: We waste food for lots of reasons, but often we have to throw away food because it believe it has ‘gone bad’ when it really has not. How do we communicate the differences between best if used by, sell by, expiration date and other date conventions to reduce food waste?
Figure out what all these dates mean with this NRDC report and Forbes article.
Prompt 6: Many restaurants are adopting ‘whole animal’ cooking, which means using as much of an animal as possible in food preparation. How can we educate chefs and culinary students about the value and sustainability in this method of cooking?
Learn more about nose-to-tail cooking and other sustainable food practices.
Prompt 7: People don’t want to eat what they are unfamiliar with, which can often result in a cycle of consuming junk food. What are ways that we can introduce young people, as well as parents cooking for their children, to affordable and healthy food items?
Check out this study from a government subsidized grocery store.
Prompt 8: Gleaning is the act of collecting excess fresh foods from farms, gardens, farmers markets, grocers, restaurants, state/county fairs, or any other sources in order to provide it to those in need. How can we connect farms, gardens and those with extra food to those who need it?
Hear what the USDA has to say about gleaning and learn more about organizations that do it well.
» Example project ideas
Some of the experts and organizations that we consulted for the article gave us example project ideas. Feel free to run with any of these, or use them as a starting point to jump to your own creative ideas.
Pastor John Wertz with Micah’s Caring Initiative expressed the value of infographics explaining our food dating conventions to help average consumers reduce their food waste. This includes how we communicate the differences between best if used by, sell by, expiration date and more.
Austin Larrowe with Feed by Seed and Chelsea Conrad with Causeway both see value in education as part of food insecurity. This could come in the form of educational resources around how to use healthy food that may be culturally unfamiliar. This might include lesson plans, simple recipes and alternatives from more familiar ingredients to more nutritional ingredients.
Kathleen Scully with the Center for Hunger-Free Communities would like to see video content showcasing those who are suffering from hunger. Organizations can use this to help their audiences better understand this perspective and begin to empathize with the problem.
Thrive/Food Access Network sees a need for a system connecting individual donors, gleaners and farmers with organizations that distribute food to the hungry.
Mealshare recently received billboard space to spread their message. A high quality billboard design could be helpful to Mealshare and other organizations across the globe that have the same opportunity to share their passion for solving this issue.
» Submit a question to our panel of experts
We will compile all of the questions for our experts to answer together. To submit a question, email it to us at hello@letsmakeamark.org.
Step Three
Submit your project
Once your project is ready for submission, we just need a few pieces of information and resources from you so that we can publish your project in the challenge showcase.
» What is needed for submission
Exact details will be provided when submissions are open, but generally speaking, each submission needs to include the following:
- Project name
- Team member(s)
- Which prompt(s) the project addresses, whether it is one (or more) of the ones provided or one of your own making.
- A cover photo to show your project in the showcase
- A URL where you've published a case study describing your project — it can be on Dribbble, Behance, Vimeo, your own site, etc. — anywhere that allows you to best showcase what your project is all about.
- A ZIP of resources that will be published for non-profits around the world to use.
