Non-profit humanitarian relief organization, Healing Hands International (HHI), will soon be raising funds for its sustainable agriculture program with a goal of $250,000. The program is dedicated to spreading education, particularly in Africa, of gardening techniques that offer resistance to threats like famine and drought.

The fundraising initiative includes a social media campaign called “Planting Seeds, Saving Lives,” scheduled to launch on Sunday, Oct. 16 to coincide with World Food Day. Senior Brooke Kehl, who currently works for HHI as a public relations and marketing assistant, is facilitating the campaign’s launch through Facebook.

Along with fundraising, the goal of the campaign is to promote awareness about both HHI and the seriousness and complexity of hunger, as well as empowering others to be involved with saving lives from hunger.

“We want to do more than just hand out food,” Kehl says. “It’s easy to get stuck in a crisis relief mode where you’re just handing out food, but it’s not sustainable and it actually ruins economies. Giving to this campaign helps someone be able to feed their family and even their community forever, which is really cool.”

Any donation, up to $20,000, will be matched by HHI’s own private, committed donors. In order to participate in the campaign’s launch, a supporter needs to join the “Planting Seeds, Saving Lives” group on Facebook. On launch day, Kehl will post a video explaining what HHI is, their purpose, and how others may get involved. Supporters are asked to share the video on their Facebook wall in order to spread its message.

The campaign also includes a competition amongst Harding University’s social clubs that will continue for two weeks after launch day. Active members may share the video on Facebook with their club name as a hashtag in the post. The number of shares from each club will be tallied after two weeks, and the winning club will receive free t-shirts for its members.

When asked what makes the cause of HHI worth investing in, Kehl said, “I think it’s important to be good stewards of what we’ve been given. Through social media, we’ve been given the opportunity to know what’s going on around us, and with that knowledge, we have power. We have the ability to choose whether to be a part of something or not. I think that this is something valuable to be a part of.”

More information about “Planting Seeds, Saving Lives” can be found on the campaign’s group page on Facebook.