September 13, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Lose weight, fight hunger.
Those are the goals behind Weight Watchers’ Lose for Good campaign, which runs through mid-October. For every 1 million pounds that members of the weight-loss club shed before then, the company will donate $250,000, or up to $1-million.
The campaign, which is in its second year, benefits two antihunger groups: Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger. Because of last year’s success — the company donated $1-million and club members lost more than 4 million pounds — Weight Watchers decided to continue the effort and add new ways to help.
The company is putting up an additional $25,000 for the charities through Lose-a-Palooza, a daylong effort to get people talking about the campaign on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other social media.
For every mention of the campaign, the company will donate $1. The event will take place on September 15.
Action Against Hunger, a charity in New York that fights malnutrition overseas, has also used the Weight Watchers campaign as inspiration for a complementary fund-raising effort. Supporters of the charity who want to lose weight can set personal weight-loss goals and ask their friends, neighbors, and coworkers to sponsor them as part of the charity’s Global Good effort.
Local Weight Watchers clubs also donate food as part of the national campaign. Last year, more than 1.2 million pounds of food was contributed to local food banks.
Barbara McKinnon, external-relations officer at Action Against Hunger, says the campaign has proved to be “a really great fit” for her charity.
“It’s tackling many different issues, both national and international hunger and also the obesity epidemic here in the United States,” she says.
Ms. McKinnon says her group has benefited from the chance to be part of a campaign with a domestic hunger group.
“We get a lot of questions about what we’re doing about hunger here in the United States, and I’m sure Share Our Strength gets a lot of questions about what they’re doing about hunger internationally,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to tackle both sides of the problem.”
What do you think of the campaign?
