The Lift-a-Life Foundation’s creation, Lead2Feed, recently announced the winner of its nationwide “World Hunger Leadership Challenge,” in which students from all over the country worked on projects that focused on solving world hunger. The middle and high school students who participated had the chance to receive $25,000 from the Yum! Brands Foundation for their local hunger relief charity. The winners, St. Francis Day School, partnered with a school in Meerut, India, in order to discuss and discover ways to fight hunger in its community. St. Francis students collected canned food and packed sack lunches while the school in India volunteered at a local orphanage.
The Chairman and CEO of Yum! Brands, Inc, David Novak, spoke with hope about the program. “I am inspired by the leadership and creativity that students from around the country used in their projects to fight hunger. Lead2Feed challenges students to think and act like leaders, work with others and set big goals to solve a real problem in our community and world. It is exciting to watch the program develop the next generation of leaders who are passionate about solving hunger.” These students have learned valuable problem-solving skills while being educated about critical global issues like world hunger. Thanks to the program, students will be better equipped to advance local solutions and apply them to a larger global context in the future.
Lead2Feed itself consists of a ten-lesson curriculum on the topic of leadership with the challenge of solving world hunger via service. Goals include working with others, creating a plan to solve local or global hunger issues, and self-awareness. Any middle or high school classroom in the United States can participate, and various projects have been attempted which range from building a race car out of canned food, fundraising, creating cookbooks, to collecting food for local food pantries. By getting youth involved in the issue of global hunger, we are creating a more educated and knowledgeable group of people who can use the skills which can later be utilized to advance the cause of defeating hunger and poverty.
– Sarah Rybak