May 14 – “For me this is a great opportunity, a starting point. I am very busy on this front, just as much as the company I work for. Repeatedly, we reported on world hunger, we did it the hard and controversial way, always in a very strong manner. Today, communication is global, and fashion isn’t just fashion. We must all be part of what happens in the world, sharing.” Says Franca Sozzani, editor of Italian Vogue, speaking in her capacity as Ambassador Against Hunger for the World Food Programme of the United Nations. The WFP every year feeds more than 90 million people in 80 countries around the world. The official appointment came this morning at the WFP headquarters in Rome by Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of the WFP. “We are grateful to Franca Sozzani for choosing the WFP and world hunger as her highest priority in the humanitarian world. In her role as a journalist and director of a major fashion magazine, Sozzani always paid great attention to the potential of girls and women in Africa and their empowerment through vocational training and education,” said Cousin. Sozzani has been, over the years, engaged in humanitarian activities with various foundations and institutions, conveying in a pioneering way a different picture of countries otherwise known especially for wars and poverty. The first trip of the new ambassador for the WFP will be in July to West Africa, then she will attend a big fundraising concert in Dubai, and a collaboration with the Taormina Film Festival. During the press conference to formalize her appointment as ambassador WFP, Sozzani quoted Martin Luther King: “If we know evil and we don’t do something about it, we become accomplices, and this is a great truth.”
