/ 30 October 2015

A dash of hope, a legacy of tomorrow

Add Hope uses the power of just R2 to make a difference to thousands of young lives
Add Hope uses the power of just R2 to make a difference to thousands of young lives

South Africa is fighting an age-old battle, a battle that is affecting the lives and wellbeing of children who go to bed hungry and wake up even hungrier. Today more than 3.2 million children in this country do not have access to proper nutrition and a child dies every 15 seconds due to a lack of essential nutrients and being underweight. These numbers should wrench every heart and see every hand reaching out to help, and this is exactly what they did to KFC, inspiring the launch of their Add Hope initiative in 2009 and saving thousands of small lives.

“We take a percentage of some of the sales of all our KFC stores around South Africa, put them into a trust and direct them towards corporate social responsibility initiatives,” says Doug Smart, managing director of KFC. “The idea came about in 2009 when we asked: what if every time a customer came to visit us, we gave them the opportunity to add some hope and contribute to this trust?”

What started out as a simple idea with contributions from KFC and consumers became something extraordinary. The initiative has raised more than R263-million in the fight against hunger in the six years since it started and currently it feeds more than 100 000 children every day.

“In 2012 we had just raised R12-million from customers and R18-million from ourselves … last year we raised R31-million from customers; it was the first year that customer contributions overtook the percentage of sales that we take. Add Hope is remarkable and [has] grown faster than we could have believed.”

The way that the trust is structured ensures that administration and sundry costs are not taken out of the raised money, as often happens with charities, but is rather given directly to those who need it the most.

“When I started here three years ago I used to tell people that we fed 40 000 people a day, but now we have recently crossed the 100 000 mark and we find this incredibly inspiring,” says Smart. “The way the fund works is that we raise the money and then partner with people already in the NGO or charitable space to spend the money. We don’t deploy the funds ourselves, but rather through other organisations, and these vary in size and scope.”

Some of the partnerships include the big names like SOS Children’s Village or JAM; others are local orphanages or spaces that have had the appropriate due governance done and fit within the remit of the funds — they must be used to feed a child. Currently KFC administers the money to 103 different beneficiaries, but the number keeps changing as new situations arise.

“We make absolutely sure that the money is going where it is supposed to go and maps back to our list of criteria for Add Hope,” says Smart. “It is about children and it is about feeding them. Many organisations do more than just feed children — they may be teaching skills or helping parents — but our role is to feed their children. Our consumers are partnering with us in giving South Africa’s hungry children the nutritious meals they need and thereby helping us to open the doors to their development.”

The impact of a poor diet on a child’s health and wellbeing is staggering. More than two million children across the world have severe eye problems due to a lack of vitamin A; growth is stunted mentally and physically due to malnourishment and much of the damage done by this is irreversible.  According to Stats SA, one in five children in South Africa go to school hungry. This affects their concentration, confidence and emotional state, and this is what KFC’s Add Hope 2015 campaign recognised when creating the first ever Add Hope advertisement.

To commemorate World Hunger Month, KFC Add Hope launched a TV advert to raise awareness of the difference a nutritious meal can make. The story is told through the drawings of some of the 100 000 children fed by the initiative each day and brings to life the power of a simple R2 donation. The 250 children who helped create the 1 000+ drawings came from one of Add Hope’s national beneficiaries, Afrika Tikkun. 

“The set, the backdrop and the characters in this television commercial are entirely drawn by the kids, all we did was animate them,” says Smart. “In the ad, there is an evolution from a very simple character drawing by a young child to a more colourful character who has pigtails and a bow in her hair. One of the insights, the story behind this story, is that when children are nutritionally challenged it shows up in their drawing — images become starker and simpler, with details left out. The character at the beginning of the commercial is very representative of what a deprived child would draw.”

The ad is extraordinary not only in its creative interpretation of the challenges that face children in South Africa, but in its using stark reality to paint an important picture. Feed a child and you have opened up a world of hope, learning and development that they never knew was possible when they went to bed on an empty stomach.

“One of the most important elements for me is that this is not just about feeding the children, it is about opening the doors to development opportunities,” says Smart. “Once they have been fed, then they can learn, they can grow and they can develop social skills. It is something that I have seen when we visit some of our charities, how these children make so much of themselves today, but none of it would have been possible without food.”

As a business, KFC has seen the impact of Add Hope ripple through more than just the charities and children they support. Internally, the campaign has had a positive effect on employee morale and satisfaction.

“The question in our annual survey asks if you feel good about the way we contribute to the community, and participants are asked to score this out of five,” says Smart. “We ask this question at both head office and in our restaurants and it is our highest scoring attribute, with around 94% of people feeling good about what we do. It has become a truly beautiful example of how corporate social responsibility can really work and make a difference.”

The Add Hope brand may have been born in South Africa, but 2015 has seen it shift internationally for the first time, now being taken globally by the KFC organisation as a whole. As exports go, it is one that is guaranteed to warm hearts. 

“We also added on an extra layer to our World Hunger Month campaign this year by introducing the Pledge Your Plate campaign alongside the launch of the Add Hope commercial,” concludes Smart. “This campaign asks South Africans to post pictures of their empty plates onto social media to help raise awareness of the 11 million people who are impacted by hunger.”

Add Hope runs all day, every day, each year on KFC menu boards across the country, and now the globe, using the power of a simple R2 to make an incredibly important difference to the lives of others. Long may it continue.