PepsiCo kicks off Chinese New Year campaign with ‘Mom Handworks’
PepsiCo Greater China Region (PepsiCo GCR), partnered with China Women’s Development Foundation (CWDF), inaugurated the establishment of “Yao Embroidery Cooperative of Youxi Town” in Ruyuan, south China’s Guangdong Province on January 28, during which they officially launched PepsiCo’s “2019 Bring Happiness Home (BHH) – Mom Handworks” Chinese New Year (CNY) charity program.
PepsiCo’s BHH CNY campaign has been rolling out for eight consecutive years, becoming the annual signature program in China’s food and beverage industry. Joining hands with CWDF’s “Mom Handworks” project, PepsiCo’s BHH campaign will donate 370,000 yuan ($54,900) to establish the “Mom Handworks Cooperative” in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, which will explore and implement an innovative public welfare model from material donation to sustainable cultural aid that enables the resurgence of national intangible cultural heritage.
“Mom Handworks” is a sustainable public welfare project initiated by CWDF in September, 2016. “Mom Handworks Cooperative” has been established in villages and supported by local women’s federations and other local government departments to help with its market promotion. The project helps create jobs for rural indigent women and provide them with some handicraft skills to make handicrafts with local ethnic flavors, as well as solve the problems of lonely elderly people and left-behind children to some extent.
“Mom Handworks,” an innovative public welfare project for China’s intangible cultural heritage, is being upgraded to carry forward traditional Chinese culture and handicrafts and build national cultural confidence from the original mode of sole material donation charity.
At the donation ceremony, PepsiCo and CWDF representatives also unveiled a unique Chinese New Year embroidery scroll. Nearly a hundred handicraftsmen from Hebei, Shandong, Qinghai, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangdong provinces spent almost two months working on this distinctive 10-meter-long embroidery scroll based on various Chinese New Year festival customs across China. According to PepsiCo, it is their special Chinese New Year gift and their best wishes to the Chinese people at home and abroad.
Zhao Guangfeng, project director of the Sponsor Department of CDWF said that with PepsiCo’s support, the establishment of ‘Yao Embroidery Cooperative of Youxi Town,’ provides local handicraft mothers a home for job creation, where they can learn and exchange their skills. “This has not only increased employment in the poverty-stricken areas through the sustainable public welfare practices, but also helped promote and preserve Yao embroidery, a national intangible cultural heritage,” Zhao said.
Lilly Yip, vice president of the Beverage Category of PepsiCo GCR said that, the Spring Festival and the concept of ‘Home’ have an irreplaceable meaning in the heart of every Chinese. “Since 2012, PepsiCo GCR has been successfully rolling out the CNY BHH campaign for eight consecutive years to demonstrate the linkage between an individual and a ‘Home’ from multiple viewpoints, which has been highly praised by the Chinese people as an annual Spring Festival celebratory event,” Yip said. “In 2019, we expect to further explore the meaning of ‘Home,’ and to showcase the diversity of traditional Chinese culture as a ‘Big Home’ to everyone.