Background
The symbol of the Red Cup originates from the many plastic, red cups, usually filled with porridge and other meals, used to feed school children in WFP School feeding programmes. When WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran began working at the World Food Programme, she was given one of these red cups with the name ‘Lily’ scratched onto the bottom (having been discarded by Lily upon receiving her new cup). Seeing that the cup was a powerful visual tool to help show the world how little food it takes to make a huge difference to a child’s life, Sheeran never travels without it.
When you "fill the cup," it not only helps to feed a child - it also fills their mind and feeds their future. The Red Cup is a symbol that simultaneously defines the challenges facing WFP and the struggle for survival that is a daily concern for those living on the edge of poverty. An empty cup symbolizes hunger, malnutrition & often disease, hungry families, children out of school, and weakened communities. A full cup represents health, education, hope, productive families, and strong communities.
Read more about this topic: Fill The Cup
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)