The way to help is by making a pledge. This can be to either Give, Volunteer or Share. By helping spread the news about and join in Pledge to End Hunger, we can all start to make a real difference in the fight against child hunger in the US.

All the donations made to this month’s 12for12k charity Share Our Strength will cover the Give side and we’re delighted to be making this happen with your support.

What we’d love for  you to do is take an extra minute after you’ve donated to us to make a pledge. This can be to blog about the event, emailing/telling your friends, wearing a badge on your blog or similar. If you’re in the US, you might even want to volunteer to help – the choice is yours.

For every pledge that is made, Tyson Foods, Inc. will donate a 35lb food bag to the cause (the equivalent of 140 servings of food).

Think about it – you can make a huge impact on child hunger in the US this month alone. Your donation to the 12for12k Challenge will go a long way to combating child hunger in the US for good and we hope you’ll offer your support to Pledge to End Hunger as well.

The 12for12k Challenge is delighted to announce that Share Our Strength will be the supported charity in March.

Also known as simply Strength.org, Share Our Strength is a national organization that makes sure no kid in America grows up hungry.

While a lot of the news about hunger normally concentrates on third world countries – and rightly so – there is a growing problem within national boundaries as well.

For instance, more than 12.4 million children in America are at risk from hunger. 12.4 million – that’s one in six children. Consequences include poorer health, fatigue, hospitalization, behavioral difficulties and impaired scholastic performance.

Share Our Strength aims to change that.

By partnering with leading corporations as well as charitable organizations and pioneering culinary events, Share Our Strength work to provide children and their families with the healthy food they need. As an idea of the difference donations can make, this is what your support does:

• $35 can help feed a child three meals a day for more than a month.
• $50 can help provide 48 preschool children with a nutritious lunch for a day.
• $100 would provide 25 healthy bags of food for a family at a food bank.
• $250 could help connect 9,300 families to programs that provide free meals for their children during the summer.
• $1,000 would help provide over 24,000 glasses of milk to a school.

The 12for12k Challenge’s aim has always been to raise $12,000 for each charity we support in 2009. Looking at the numbers above, you can see how much a difference your donation would make to hungry kids across the United States.

To help us towards this goal, we will be announcing a collaboration within the next 48 hours with an amazing cause that is also highlighting childhood hunger in America.

No child should feel hunger. While sadly we can’t help feed every single child in the world, we can make a huge difference to some of them. Please support us in our challenge for March and help 12for12k raise some much-needed funds for Share Our Strength. $10 is all it takes.