Fighting Hunger with Fingers

On October 16th, World Food Day took place. While this event mostly took place on social media, to help spread awareness about global hunger and how to help end it, Google Play took it one step further. Google Play joined forces with the World Food Programme, the food assistance branch of the United Nations, to use their apps to help raise money for the program. They did this by releasing certain app's for which 100% of in app purchases would go to the funding of the World Food Program. This "charity collection" is set to run until Sunday, October 21st and currently includes 12 featured apps. Some of these apps include; Jurassic World: The Game, Dragon City, Cooking Fever, and WFP's own app, ShareTheMeal.

Now what makes this whole concept even more amazing is the fact that these in-app purchases are integrated in a way that they all have some relevance to fighting world hunger. Most of the purchases have to do with food, so not only is it donating money, but it is helping spread the word in a non-pushy type of platform. The head of the WFP's ShareTheMeal concept, Massimiliano Costa, said "Innovation is the heart of creating a world with zero hunger", when asked about the collaboration with Google Play. To me this is what really makes the story so cool. Donations and charity work from companies is nothing new, but getting consumers integrated into the story is what makes these apps such a fresh campaign.
Living in a first world, privileged country like the United States, its often easy to forget about those in much worse situations than ourself. Being that everyone here already has a smartphone in our pockets, using apps to connect with them is really such a smart choice. People may even be humbled by the concept and stop to think the next time they make a purchase, weather or not it is a truly necessary purchase. While hunger has been declining over the past several years, it's starting to make a return yet again. This is a perfect time to push the platform, in light of the several global disasters we have had over the past several months. What I also like about this campaign in particular is it helps being attention to the World Food Program in general, and their mission of zero hunger. Not only is this mission helping millions of people in need, but is also is making the world a better place as a whole. It is always refreshing, to see big companies or just people in general using technology for the bettering on the world. Not only is this in-app purchase donation a great marketing tools for future companies to take advantage of, but it also shows how technology is not done advancing. Their is always room to come up with the next cool, and immersive technique.