Raffle prizes needed: Menu for Hope III

Hello all

Some of you may have received a note from Pim, the amazing person behind Chez Pim, requesting raffle prizes for Menu For Hope III.

Menu For Hope is an annual charitable raffle whose proceeds benefit humanitarian causes around the world. The first instalment assisted victims of the South East Asian tsunami and last year monies were collected for UNICEF to help those impacted by the earthquake in the Kashmiri region of India-Pakistan. This year funds raised will go to the United Nations World Food Program.

Planning for Menu for Hope III, scheduled from 11-22 December 2006, is well underway and this year, monies raised will support the United Nations World Food Programme.

This year, each geographic area has its own host blog. Pim asked me to look after Canada, and knowing what a great event this is, along with how important the UNWFP is, of course I said yes.

Dear readers, this is where your help is needed.

If you are able to provide a raffle prize to this worthy endeavour, we'd all appreciate it. Here’s a link to last year’s list to give you an idea as to what has been donated in the past: http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/2005/12/a_menu_for_hope.html . If you can donate something, here's what you need to do before December 1:

1. Come up with a gift, or a set of gifts, to offer as a raffle prize. Prizes don’t have to be expensive or swanky (but we won’t turn down expensive or swanky gifts): a jar of home-made preserves, a good-condition cookbook or two, gift certificates at a local restaurant or shop. Remember that you will also be responsible for shipping the prize to the raffle winner, no matter where they live. So, please make sure you could afford the shipping cost as well.
2. Provide two images of your gifts, one at 75x75pix thumbnail and another a bit larger at 240x160pix.
3. Provide a description of your gift. We need your help in selling tickets, so make your prize description wonderfully persuasive!
4. Email all of the above to corresponding host blog in your region:

• Asia Pacific: Helen of Grab Your Fork
• Canada: Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict (me!)
• Europe & UK: David Lebovitz of Davidlebovitz.com
• Latin America & South America: Melissa de Leon of the Cooking Diva
• USA-East Coast Adam the Amateur Gourmet
• USA-West Coast: Sam of Becks and Posh
• USA-The Rest:Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen
• Wine blogs: Alder Yarrow of Vinography.

During the live campaign, Dec 11-22:

1. On December 11, write a blog post about the campaign and your raffle prize. Ask your readers to donate money to buy virtual raffle tickets to support WFP. Each US$10 ticket buys one virtual raffle ticket for a prize of their choice. Ticket buyers can specify their desired prize in the comment area of the donation form.
2. Be active during the time our campaign is live. Monitor how your raffle prize is doing on our fundraising page, and encourage more of your readers to donate. You may also write about other prizes that your readers might be interested in.

How does the money collecting work?
In interest of transparency, the online fundraising company, First Giving will collect ticket monies and pass them along directly to the UNWFP. We're also pleased to let you know that First Giving has agreed to reduce their administration fees to three per cent (from four) of funds collected--every little bit helps!

Tickets will be sold at US$10 each. Last year's raffle raised more than US$17,000 and we are hoping to beat that this year.

We hope you can help us out this year. If you have any questions, or concerns, please feel free to email Pim at pim@chezpim.com or me (address in my side bar).

Thank you so much in advance for your help.

cheers!
jasmine

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edits: updated contact list