Feb. 6, 2005 Fighting world hunger is no child's play for sisters Aliza, 11, and Hallel, 9 By URIEL HEILMAN WATERTOWN, Massachusetts There are several things that distinguish a new Boston-based Jewish group working to end world hunger: the breadth of its scope, its outreach to consumers rather than philanthropists, its interfaith orientation. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about WorldManna.org is that the group's ambitious method for tackling world hunger was the brainchild of two little girls who conceived of the program before the elder one had even turned 6. Of course, that was half a lifetime ago for Aliza and Hallel Abramowitz-Silverman, who today are 11 and 9, respectively. "You can't live without food," Aliza explains. "We want to reduce world hunger by half by 2015." "We know that if we go through with this, it will make the whole world better," Hallel chimes in. The girls' idea is simple: Food companies that agree to donate 1 percent of their proceeds to charities that feed the world's hungry will bear the WorldManna logo on their products. Supportive consumers will go out of their way to buy food products bearing the logo-three sheaves of wheat-thereby rewarding participating companies and providing a financial incentive for additional companies to join. For now, WorldManna is focused on getting consumers to sign the group's online petition pledging to buy products bearing the organization's logo (www.worldmanna.org), in part by forming partnerships with other like-minded groups committed to promoting WorldManna's concept. Once WorldManna has amassed 10,000 signatures-representing several million dollars in monthly purchasing power-the organization will begin soliciting food companies to join. Last month, the Christian umbrella group Church World Service signed on to help promote the program, joining the UN Foundation, the UN Millennium Task Force, Hillel, Beliefnet.com and Brandeis University's Center for Hunger and Poverty as backers of WorldManna. With funding from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, WorldManna is a project of SocialAction.com, a website run by Hallel and Aliza's father, Yosef Abramowitz, through the Jewish Family & Life media group. Though WorldManna is only about half a year old, its executive director says investors in food companies already have indicated that their intention to support the program. "I believe that WorldManna.org is doable and can raise substantial sums of money that have never before been tapped into," said Diane Kolb, the former Anti-Defamation League official who now heads WorldManna. "We have talked with investors in the food industry who feel very strongly about it." In an industry with razor-thin profit margins, securing pledges of 1 percent of revenue undoubtedly will be a great challenge. But WorldManna officials say any loss to the companies will be offset by the additional revenue they are likely to get from consumers seeking to buy products with the WorldManna logo. These companies will experience a revenue boost not unlike the boost companies get by adding kosher certification, Kolb said. "We believe sales will go up, so it's sales and marketing dollars, not just philanthropy," Kolb said. "That becomes the incentive for the food company. It has people looking for their products. And we're giving the average consumer the opportunity to participate for free." So far, more than 2,300 consumers have signed the WorldManna pledge, in part by hearing about it from Aliza and Hallel, whom Kolb describes as the project's "initiators." The girls say their awareness of poverty and hunger around the world stems in large part from their learning about the provenance of their adopted brother Adar, who is from Ethiopia. "It turns out that the walls of an Ethiopian house are made out of dried animal poop," Hallel explains earnestly. "It's really gross." Hallel's father, Yosef Abramowitz, says his children's project is the consequence of an education in Jewish values-both at home and at their school, the Jewish Community Day School of Watertown, Mass. "Here's an opportunity in which Jewish values get to be played out on a world stage, and it's not an accident that it's coming from kids in a second-generation, day-school educated family," Abramowitz said. His wife, Susan Silverman, is a rabbi. Aliza, a precocious pre-teen who looks like a miniature version of an earnest, bespectacled 30-year-old, invokes a Jewish adage to explain why she and her sister decided to take on this project. "If we don't, who will?" she says, her plaintive appeal an echo of Hillel's famous axioms in the Ethics of the Fathers, or Pirkei Avot. "Be the change you want to be-seriously," she says. Last month, Aliza gave a talk about her project at a conference session at the Limmud NY gathering in upstate New York. Though she was the youngest session leader at the conference, Aliza did not seem fazed-except for the eccentricities of some of her audience members. "It was hard because some of them had blue hair," she said. "I've never seen anybody before with blue hair." The girls also have grown savvy about using their cute approach to get petitioners to sign-something that might come in handy when WorldManna starts soliciting food companies. "Some people find it hard to say no to kids," Hallel says with a smile.