HUNGER RELIEF
1. The objectives of Sustainable Development are a set of challenges that were accepted in 2015 by all states with the aim of ensuring sustainable development for the future (2030) and avoid serious problems that affect us today. The SDGs are made up of 17 interrelated objectives, where the intervention and improvement of one of them will affect, to a greater or lesser extent, the results of another objective. The 17 challenges are very important since they involve the whole population under a single concern and with a single objective: to solve the problems. They are very ambitious, as their goal is to ensure that no one is left behind. The SDGs manage to cover all the areas where there is a potential problem: reducing poverty, providing access to water, achieving gender equality, etc. These are some of the 17 proposed objectives. Despite progress, there is still much to be achieved, the figures reflect the serious problem, for example, around 736 million people still live on less than $1.90 a day, greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase and are 50% higher than in 1990.
In terms of the support that SDGs receive from stakeholders and the global community, they have played an important role in visualizing and raising awareness of the challenges. It was at the United Nations General Assembly that this programme was adopted and the UN continues to promote and strengthen the idea, for example with the launch of the SDG Achievement Fund. In addition, the idea of creating strategic alliances with other actors (governments, companies, institutions…) is pursued in order to maximize the dissemination of the SDGs. These alliances usually have a local presence and proximity to the problems; therefore, they can contribute their knowledge in the subject. The companies provide management capacity, flexibility, technical resources or even technology in order to meet the objectives. The SDGs have initiated various campaigns for the fulfillment of the objectives; for example, with the Spotlight Initiative, where the European Union and the United Nations are promoting a campaign to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls (Goal number 5, gender equality).
2. As for the SDG, we have worked with goal 2, called Zero Hunger. Considering how our society is growing and how it is developing at a social level, we believe that famine and malnutrition are very relevant issues today. The reality is raw and we must accept it and then try to change it. The oceans, beaches, flora and biodiversity, among many other things, are suffering more and more. Climate change further complicates a situation in which thousands of people have no access to food to survive. To end the problem there must be a radical change in the food system. More than 800 million people have few resources to eat and, if all goes well, a total of 5 million people are expected to die by 2050. Ending poverty would be too general a goal, so Zero Hunger can go a little deeper. For this year, the aim is to maintain genetic diversity in plants, seeds and animals and to promote access to and the fair distribution of benefits derived from the use of genetic resources. In ten years time it should have improved. Ending famine and ensuring access to food; ending all forms of malnutrition; doubling agricultural productivity and the income of small-scale food producers, particularly women, indigenous peoples, family farmers… and ensuring sustainable food production systems and implementing resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production are some of the aims of Zero Hunger.
3.1 So, after having decided to deal with Goal 2- Zero Hunger, we decided to move to a more specific problem and focus on targets 2.1( By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.) and 2.2 (By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons).This means we are trying to address the needs and improve the life quality of homeless and underprivileged people that live in our country. Especially the most vulnerable social groups among them like young children, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older people.
After all we decided to cooperate with AB Vassilopoulos, which is a greek company that holds Super Market stores all over the country and create the “Hunger Relief” C.S.R. program. The aim of this program will be the creation of a constantly growing network of people (that will belong to the above categories) that will be helped through this program. In collaboration with A.B. Vassilopoulos we will provide the people in need weekly with selected products from our stores so they can maintain a healthy diet. The program will provide nutritionists who will create a monthly diet program for each person in need, specialized in his/her own personal nutritional needs, which is also the most innovative/original part of our initiative, as there may already be some NGO’S that are helping with the hunger issue but they are not focusing in the specific needs of the people. We also decided to team-up with volunteering teams (Ithaca), which will help with the distribution of the food and the arrangement of the meetings between those in need and the nutritionists. The clients can contribute with buying coupons and selected products from special stands in the stores of AB.
3.2 By implementing design thinking we had to go a step further and think about what people really need and how we response to those needs. First of all when our team members gathered together, we had to find our goal. Since we finalized our goal we needed to focus on the users, what are their needs and their problems. Our goal is zero hunger and since many people suffer daily from hunger we had to define a more specific target group that our company would deliver for. Therefore we decided to start by providing to the homeless and underprivileged people. Especially children, pregnant, lactating women, adolescent girls and older people. But how do they feel, what do they need and how do we meet their needs and our goal? Therefore we had to empathize. Doing some research we found more information and we tried to put ourselves into our users’ shoes. We realized that many companies start ups and ngo try to feed people who are in need by giving meals but they don’t take into account that they have more specific needs. When you don’t eat right and even worst when you don’t eat for days your body develops problems. Everyone has specific needs. For example a poor woman who is also pregnant needs food but providing her just food isn’t going to solve the problem , she needs the right kind of diet. As we took some papers and pens, each of us started drawing ideas about the ways we can solve this problem and reach our goal. At the end we had the answer in front of our eyes. After discussion and examination of our ideas we realized that even though all of the solutions were creative not all of them were possible in real life. After choosing our solution we held interviews, tested and evaluated our idea.
3.3 As we were done with our idea we needed to create a user journey in order to see our project from their perspective. The user journey Our idea is #hungerrelief We are part of the CSR team of AB Vasilopoulos and we collaborate with nutritionists to provide the homeless & underprivileged people with a personalized diet that responds to their individual nutritional needs. The user: Name: Antonia Profession: She doesn’t work Any Other Key characteristics : She is four months pregnant . She doesn’t work and her husband got fired. Antonia is home worried. Now that her husband is fired they will not be able to make ends meet until he finds a new job. Until then, the little money they have left can barely cover their bills so they will not get evicted. She has a baby on the way and she can not take care of herself. The awareness: Antonia feels extremely stressed and decides to go for walk. While walking in the streets she sees an outdoor advertising, notifying her about the new AB Vasilopoulos CSR project which can provide her free meals based on the needs of the baby. The contact : Antonia goes into the store in order to find more information. She gets in touch with the volunteers and they manage to schedule a meeting between Antonia and the nutritionist in order to start the program. Problem is fixed : Antonia starts the program and she already feels better, healthier and happier. She eats correctly without worrying about how she is going to afford her needy diet until her husband find a new job.
3.4 In order for us to be able to evaluate the magnitude of the problem we searched through surveys to see how many people are having hunger or malnutrition issues. We were shocked when we found out how much crisis has affected the country and it’s people over the last ten (10) years. Realizing all these, we discussed and we decided we should focus on addressing the nutritional needs of the most vulnerable social groups among the homeless and underprivileged people. We think those are the people that are more in need and it’s more difficult for them to ensure their diet so we focused on them and tried to help them have a diet that lacks no nutrients. Also, along the journey we conducted surveys with people and nutritionists who would like to help but didn’t know the way till now. So via this program we bring those people together by raising awareness and giving the people the chance to help even with just purchasing coupons inside the stores.
For sure, we care a lot about ensuring that the people that we help will be able to maintain their diet, so during this program we should be very focused on how we are building the network. Firstly, we contacted nutritionist Mr. Ioannis Kalfas who told us he likes the idea and that our initiative is something he never heard before and also never has been suggested to him to participate in a similar action. He was also kind enough to propose a diet plan that we can apply to meet the nutritional needs of the adolescent underprivileged/homeless girls.
In addition, volunteers from “Ithaca” noticed that it is of great importance that on the way our initiative is formed anyone can help cause it doesn’t demand spending a lot of time or specific abilities, so it’s easier for someone to help even after his regular work. Also, Silia,25 volunteer in Ithaca highlighted that she thinks that every initiative thas has to do with helping people in Greece is useful due to the lack of governmental support and also pointed out that our idea is innovative and is going to be sustainable.
Furthermore, Alexia Machaira (Sustainable Retail & Communications Manager) of AB Vassilopoulos highlighted that she thinks our idea is a very nice initiative that aims to help people who are in need. She also mentioned that they are already funding a similar program with nutritionists which is called “Diatrofi” (http://diatrofi.prolepsis.gr/el/) so through that we realize that our idea is really lined up the CSR policy of AB Vassilopoulos. In addition, she proposed that we reach out to the N.G.O. “Mporoume” which is bringing underprivileged people in contact with foundations and companies that offer food. Speaking about drawbacks, the only thing she mentioned is that she wasn’t really sure about the stands, because maybe the underprivileged people are targeted in a bad way and seem divided from the other people.
So, we thought this might be something that has to change along the way and we can find another way of raising awareness and offer the clients the chance to help.
4. So, two weeks after launching our social media pages and our website we have the following results.
In order to raise awareness and communicate our idea with possible volunteers, nutritionists and clients who would like to help in our initiative we formed a 360° Campaign plan. So, our Above the line marketing plan consists of a TV commercial-call2action, a radio ad-invite and outdoor prints that we will install in the streets so we can engage as many passers-by as we can.
Using Below the Line marketing we focused on creating indoor prints that will be used in our stores in order to inform people about our initiative. After considering Mrs Machaira’s proposal we came to the conclusion to -at least- cancel the “raising awareness” stands that we were initially aiming to install in the stores (part of our Below the Line marketing plan).
As part of the communication plan we built a site (https://pane-kos.wixsite.com/website) and we created pages on social media, more specifically on Instagram(https://www.instagram.com/hunger_relief/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/hungerrelief12/?modal=admin_todo_tour). Our site features links that direct the user to our social media and consists of four (4) pages. It has the homepage where the visitor can learn news about our actions, there is a forum where volunteers can talk with each other and also with the nutritionists, there is a page where you can see all the selected products that you can buy as a client in order to offer help/make a donation for the program and there’s also an apply form for those who would like to get involved and become volunteers as well as a chat box where the visitors can click and text us if they have any questions about our action or the program. On our Facebook page we made several posts letting people know about our actions and the ways people can get involved and donate. All of the prints and posters we posted are our creations. At the same logic we acted while setting up our Instagram page keeping the same colors and logo as well as posting information and photos about our program.
5. Αll in all working with SDG-number 2 and trying to address the Zero Hunger issue we realized that we must not remain silent and always try to help other people to face any inconveniencies that may get into. Furthermore, we discovered that if we really try we can act as whole, find unexpected solutions for difficult problems and make an impact, contributing to the society that we live in. Also, we found out that if you try to reach out to people they are approachable, they are willing to help and most of them actually care and really take into account what you have to propose or offer. Finally, this project reminded us how important it is to work and collaborate with other people in order to achieve a common goal. Maybe we’re not fully there yet, but what we achieved up to this point proves that if you put in the work, imagination and creative thinking can start turning into reality! Now that our dreams are starting taking shape we aim to take this even further!
- Special thanks to Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou for her helpful advice and support.
- Our team: Christina Panagakou, Nickos Pan, Maria Kall, Lucia Montero, juan anhel martinez safont.
