Will Youtube answer UN Aid agency’s call?

The U.N food aid agency has called on film makers to help it raise the awareness of hunger and bring the reality of poverty to the “You Tube” followers.

A contest was launched on Wednesday by the World Food Program (WFP) for 60 second video that geared at creating a buzz in the online community about global hunger.

The WFP communications director Nancy Roman said that for those among them who did day-in, day-out backbreaking work of getting food to hungry people, it was sometimes discouraging how people understood that hunger killed a child every five seconds. The agency has posted its own video which is available at its site www.youtube.com/hungerbytes. Towards the end of the video, a message goes on saying, in about 850 million people go to bed hungry every night.

The five best films are likely to be posted on WFP’s YouTube site, with an overall winner receiving a trip to one of the relief operations. WFP said that filmmakers had a better chance of winning if they get play on networking sites like Facebook or Myspace before the competition’s deadline on July 2008.

This isn’t the first time WFP has come up with an awareness programme using computer technology. Earlier in 2005 it launched a video game in which players could plan and distribute food drops to the people in need.

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November 21, 2007 | Filed Under Internet, Tech News