Children are served school meals provided by the Onigiri Action campaign. (Courtesy of TABLE FOR TWO)
A Tokyo-based nonprofit organization has organized a campaign to provide school meals to children in Asia and Africa by asking people to post onigiri (rice balls) photos on social media.
Chie Omiya came up with the idea. (Courtesy of TABLE FOR TWO)
Under the Onigiri Action campaign conducted by TABLE FOR TWO until the end of November, for every onigiri photo posted with the hashtag #OnigiriAction on Facebook and Instagram or on the organization’s website, the group’s sponsors and supporters donated 100 yen to provide five school meals to children in such countries as Tanzania and Myanmar.
The organization said it managed to offer a total of 850,000 school meals, which are equivalent to meals for 4,000 children for a year.
It was Chie Omiya, a TABLE FOR TWO member and a mother of a two-year-old,
Onigiri box lunches depicting popular anime characters. (Courtesy of TABLE FOR TWO)
who came up with the idea of saving starving children in the world with onigiri photos.
“As I make meals for my child, I thought of children around the world who cannot have enough to eat,” said Omiya, 33, from Awara, Fukui Prefecture, adding that she wondered what can be done while in Japan.
Omiya focused on onigiri, a familiar food in Japan, in order to attract people’s attention. She said she also hoped the campaign would help boost consumption of rice, as she learned from a farm ministry survey that 20 percent of men in their 20s eat rice less than once a month.
High school students imitate poses from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting “The Last Supper,” holding onigiri in their hands. (Courtesy of TABLE FOR TWO)
While calling on companies active in making social contributions to become sponsors for the campaign, the organization asked people to post onigiri photos between mid-October and the end of November. It received an average of 200 pictures every day from farmers, housewives, students and celebrities at home and abroad. The number of photos totaled some 108,000, the group said.
JA Hanasaki Fukui officials eat onigiri. (Courtesy of JA Hanasaki Fukui)
JA Hanasaki Fukui, an agricultural cooperative in Fukui where Omiya is from, supported the campaign. The cooperative’s officials and women members posted 417 onigiri photos and the cooperative designated the eighth of every month as the Onigiri Day to promote the food.
A picture posted from abroad shows children eating onigiri. (Courtesy of TABLE FOR TWO)