PR Week Announced Yum! Brands’ World Hunger Relief Initiative to Raise Awareness, Volunteerism and Funds Wins Top Honor
PR Week Announced Yum! Brands’ World Hunger Relief Initiative to Raise Awareness, Volunteerism and Funds Wins Top Honor as “Cause–Related Campaign of the Year 2010”
Louisville, KY, March 17, 2010 – Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM) has been honored with PR Week’s “Cause Related Campaign of the Year 2010” award for World Hunger Relief, the world’s largest private–sector hunger relief effort spanning 110 countries and 36,000 KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants. The Company’s World Hunger Relief effort raises awareness, volunteerism and funds for United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and other hunger relief agencies.
According to PR Week, Yum! Brands, along with its lead global agency Weber Shandwick, took the unique step of implementing a PR program “all about the cause: helping the UN World Food Programme and thousands of global relief agencies eliminate hunger.” The PR Week Awards recognizes the best corporate, nonprofit, agency and education teams. As stated on the organization’s website, a PR Week award is “a unique symbol of achievement and leadership, and immediately sets the winner apart from all others.”
“Congratulations to those across the globe involved with World Hunger Relief, including our employees, franchisees and partners at WFP,” said Jonathan Blum, Senior Vice President, Yum! Brands, Inc. “As the world’s largest restaurant company, we believe it is our privilege and responsibility to help find a meaningful solution to this critical problem and leave the world a better place than we found it.”
“Partnering with WFP to fight global hunger is win–win,” said Nancy Roman, Director of WFP’s Public Policy, Communications and Private Partnership Division. “Yum! Brands has made an enormous contribution to the next generation by providing millions of school meals to hungry children worldwide.” She added that WFP has benefitted from awareness about hunger among the company’s many consumers, which marks a step toward solving world hunger. “They deserve it,” she said. “If more companies followed YUM’s lead in engaging their consumers in global problems like hunger, we’d have a better chance of solving them.“
In January 2010, WFP named Yum! Brands Private Sector Partner of the Year for the Company’s World Hunger Relief global effort during WFP’s annual CEO and Global Leaders dinner. In the past three years, World Hunger Relief has raised nearly $60 million for WFP and other hunger relief organizations and is helping to provide approximately 250 million meals, saving the lives of millions of people in remote corners of the world. More than 1.4 million of the Company’s employees, franchisees and their families have volunteered more than 15 million hours to aid hunger relief efforts in communities worldwide.
At the Clinton Global Initiative in 2008, Yum! Brands was recognized for its hunger relief efforts. Over a five–year span, the Company pledged to: raise and donate at least $80 million to help WFP and others provide 200 million meals for hungry school children in developing countries; donate 20 million hours of hunger relief volunteer service in the communities in which it operates; donate $200 million worth of its prepared food to hunger agencies in the United States; and use the Company’s marketing clout to generate awareness of the hunger problem, and convince others to become part of the solution.
Yum! and its brands have been committed to fighting hunger for more than a decade by donating more than $46 million of prepared food annually to the underprivileged in the United States. Since the Company went public in 1997, it has donated more than $550 million of its food to hunger relief agencies in the U.S. The Company also has been the primary sponsor of the Dare to Care Food Bank in Louisville for nine years, and has donated $9 million to this local agency.
For more information on Yum! Brands World Hunger Relief effort, visit FromHungertoHope.com.
Yum! Brands, Inc., (NYSE:YUM) based in Louisville, Kentucky, is the world’s largest restaurant company in terms of system restaurants, with more than 37,000 restaurants in over 110 countries and territories. The company is ranked #239 on the Fortune 500 List, with revenues in excess of $11 billion in 2008. Four of the Company’s restaurant brands – KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s – are the global leaders of the chicken, pizza, Mexican–style food and quick–service seafood categories, respectively. Outside the United States, the Yum! Brands system opened more than four new restaurants each day of the year, making it a leader in international retail development. The company has consistently been recognized for its reward and recognition culture, diversity leadership, community giving, and consistent shareholder returns.
WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. In 2010, WFP aims to feed more than 90 million people in 73 countries.