Mother’s Day in the UK: WFP and Tilda Rice helping mums together
‘Basic nutrition has not yet been achieved across the world and more needs to be done to help those in need.’
This March, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Tilda Rice is running its sixth cause-related marketing campaign, Helping Mums Together, in support of the UN agency’s work providing improved nutritional foods to mothers and children in Bangladesh.
For over 15 years, WFP has partnered with leading companies to leverage their technical expertise, global reach and employee and customer bases. Tilda Rice is one such partner, working with WFP since 2011 to raise awareness and funds in support of WFP’s work with maternal and child nutrition in Bangladesh.
Through its Helping Mums Together campaign, Tilda is donating the equivalent value of a nutrition-boosting meal for a new or expectant mother in Bangladesh. This helps her to stay healthy and gives her child the best start in life every time a specially marked pack of rice is purchased. The nutrition-boosting meals include vitamin and mineral-enriched porridges that help provide the nutrition needed to stay healthy and combat low birthweight in children.
Since violence in Myanmar forced more than 745,000 people over the border and into refugee camps in Bangladesh in 2017, WFP has been providing vital nutritional support to refugees and residents of host communities in and around the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar. Here, WFP provides specialized nutrition to more than 225,000 women and children at 34 nutrition centres in refugee camps. For children, the first 1,000 days from conception to 2 years of age are pivotal. By helping WFP provide vital nutritional support, Tilda is making a difference in tackling the life-altering effects of malnutrition.
Tilda isn’t just helping raise money for WFP’s critical programmes in Bangladesh — it is also engaging people across the United Kingdom to learn about WFP’s work through the Helping Mums Together campaign. Last year, the campaign featured TV’s The Great British Bake Off finalist Ruby Bhogal. She devised a special Mother’s Day recipe using Tilda Rice, and gave interviews with WFP to explain the impact this campaign had on mothers and children in Bangladesh.
This year, the campaign partnered with acclaimed celebrity chef Cyrus Todiwala. Chef Cyrus gave a masterclass on rice to encourage people everywhere to create their own recipes using Tilda Pure Basmati, which is linked to the WFP donation.
“We understand the vital role that nutrition plays in proper cognitive and physical development, especially in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.”
The campaign is engaging social media influencers who replicated Cyrus’s recipe or created their own unique recipes using Tilda Rice, and then shared these through photos and videos on their social media pages. These celebrity collaborations, and public engagement through social media, help bring awareness to the Tilda-WFP partnership and our important work in Bangladesh.
“It’s an honour to be partnering with Tilda to support the World Food Programme on a key project that has been providing meals to new and expectant mothers for a number of years,” said chef Cyrus. “It is important to recognise that basic nutrition has not yet been achieved across the world and that more needs to be done to help those in need.”
Jonathan Calland, Head of External Affairs at Tilda, said: “We understand the vital role that nutrition plays in proper cognitive and physical development, especially in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.”
Since the WFP-Tilda partnership began in 2011, Tilda has donated the value of almost 6 million nutrition-boosting meals for WFP to provide to mothers and children in Bangladesh.
