Create A Masterpiece, Feed A Family

One in eight Americans are struggling with hunger. Food banks are seeing greatly increased demand this year, and it's not limited to people who live in the inner city; 9% of suburban households are "food insecure", lacking enough food to live fully productive lives.

To bring attention to the increasing problem of hunger in the United States, the Grain Foods Foundation (GFF), a non-profit nutrition education association, has created the Bread Art Project, which uses virtual toast as a strategy for fighting hunger. GFF is donating $50,000 to Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger-relief organization, plus $1 for every Bread Art submission (up to a maximum donation of $100,000).

After you enter the Workshop section of the Bread Art Project Website, you get to decorate a digital bread slice. The artwork is hung on the wall of the online art gallery. It's easy to create a work of bread art. You start with a canvas of white, country white, wheat, or oatmeal bread, which can be toasted to your specifications. When the canvas is ready, you upload a picture or use the tools to draw your own design. You can add text, and animate the creation if you want.

When you're satisfied with the way your masterpiece looks, you give it a name, place it in a category (people, animals, landscape, illustration, or other) and submit it. After the art is approved, it gets "hung" in the virtual Gallery. It was a lot of fun to browse through the thousands of images that have already been submitted. Some of them were very professional looking.

At this point, the Bread Art Project is scheduled to continue through the end of May, so if you want to participate do it quickly. As of today, there were approximately 17,000 submissions.