Be a good egg by eating one less Easter egg

|PIC1|Turn one chocolate Easter egg into 120 real eggs and help feed someone in a developing country. This is the challenge in the run up to Easter from Christian international development charity World Emergency Relief (WER).

The charity's new 'Be a Good Egg' campaign is asking people to donate the cost of a typical Easter egg - around £6.00 - with which WER will be able to buy a laying hen to provide an impoverished family with more than 120 eggs a year.

The campaign has been devised to appeal to children and families, with an interactive website www.beagoodegg.com, fun campaign material with lots of rotten 'yolks' and a craft kit for turning an egg box into a Be a Good Egg collection box.

"Many of us will overindulge on chocolate this Easter," says Alex Haxton, director of operations at World Emergency Relief, "so having one less Easter egg will be good for our own health and also help change someone else's life for the better into the bargain.

|PIC2|Hope Community Centre near Naivasha in Kenya is home to more than 200 children. Two years ago WER provided funding for Sister Lucy, who runs the centre, to buy some laying hens to provide the children with fresh eggs to eat. The scheme has been so successful that the orphanage now has 400 chicken laying around 300 eggs a day. Some of these are eaten and others are sold to raise money. The centre has even been able to buy two pigs, one cow and a welding machine from the proceeds of its eggs.

"We work with lots of projects and communities in developing countries, and having hens laying eggs is one of the easiest steps towards self sufficiency in terms of both food and income," says Mr Haxton. "It's a cheap and easy way to make a real difference to the lives of people who are genuinely hungry and in need."

According to the British Retail Consortium, an average of 80 million Easter eggs are sold in the UK each year at a cost of £500 million. If just one in every 1000 children in the UK donated the cost of one of their Easter eggs - or asked someone who would normally give them an egg to donate the cash instead - it would enable the charity to buy 11,500 laying hens which would then produce more than 1,380,000 eggs in a year. That's a lot of omelettes.

|PIC3|The £6.00 donation being asked for by WER would fund the purchase of a laying hen and help towards the cost of its feed and housing. The more donations received, the more laying hens can be provided to poor communities in developing countries.

"It's easy maths with life changing results," continues Mr Haxton. "For our purposes, the eternal chicken and egg question is a no-brainer. You need the chicken first in order to get the eggs and this is how, with a little Easter generosity, we're hoping to help needy families and communities around the world feed themselves."

Campaign material contains egg-citing challenges, egg-straordinary facts, terrible yolks and loads of chickens. There's also a craft kit for turning an egg box into a Be a Good Egg collection box, egg-citing fundraising ideas and egg-spress recipes. All it takes is a little hen-ergy!

For more information or to order your Be a Good Egg kit, visit www.beagoodegg.com