Harry Potter Alliance: the Hunger Is Not a Game Campaign
The Harry Potter Alliance launches the Hunger is Not a Game Campaign
Working together with Oxfam, the HPA announces campaign to coincide with the release of The Hunger Games Movie
March 2012 - Boston, MA - The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) will celebrate the release of The Hunger Games by partnering with Oxfam to raise awareness of hunger-related issues around the globe. Hunger is Not a Game, the HPA's first Imagine Better campaign, unites fans of The Hunger Games, the Harry Potter fan community, and Oxfam to tackle the pressing issue of the politics of hunger.
"For children around the world, hunger is something they live with every single day. Just as in The Hunger Games series, hunger is often used as a way to oppress and control a population," said HPA Executive Director Andrew Slack. "Through our project Imagine Better, we have teamed up with The Hunger Games fan community, as well as Oxfam, to seek food production reform to ensure that no child is ever caught up in corporations' deadly game."
The campaign began on March 8 with International Women's Day by honoring authors such as J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins and the heroic female characters they have created, including Hermione Granger and Katniss Everdeen. J.K. Rowling has inspired millions of young women around the world through the inspirational characters she created and through her own example.
To celebrate International Women's Day, the HPA is asking its members to share the women in fiction and fact that inspire them most. Additionally, staff members and HPA partners are sharing personal stories of how female characters have influenced their lives.
The HPA is also partnering with Oxfam by asking its members to sign Oxfam's GROW pledge, both online and at midnight theatrical release parties for The Hunger Games. The pledge seeks to reform the way food is grown and distributed in order to ensure that no one goes hungry.
Finally, the campaign includes a global food drive called Relief to the Districts. Throughout the month of March, HPA chapters all over the globe are holding local food drives to help stock the shelves of local food banks. As the HPA fights to bring down the Capitol of The Hunger Games, which hoards food and lives richly while the Districts starve, it's asking its members to provide relief directly to those who go hungry every day.
The HP Alliance (www.thehpalliance.org) is a 501c3 nonprofit that engages Harry Potter fans in social activism. With over 70 active chapters and 40 volunteer staff, the HPA has donated five cargo planes of supplies to Haiti, 55,000 books to schools and communities across the globe, contributed to protection for thousands in Darfur, and made huge strides in anti-genocide, LGBT, media reform advocacy, and more. Covered in hundreds of major publications and praised by JK Rowling, Harry Potter celebrities, Paul Farmer, and a slew of NGO's, the HPA recently came in 1st place in the Chase Bank Community Giving Contest on Facebook winning $250,000.