It's an image you've no doubt seen in your news feed countless times over the past week: a friend, family member or celebrity getting drenched in ice-cold water to support awareness for ALS.
If you live in India, you may have recently seen another image, too: a person holding a bucket of rice, donated to help feed the hungry.
The woman behind the fast-growing "Rice Bucket Challenge," Manju Latha Kalanidhi, says she was inspired to launch her initiative after she realized she could make a tangible impact in her home country, where a quarter of the world's malnourished people reside and rice is a staple.
"When I found that several Indians took the Ice Bucket Challenge up without understanding the real meaning behind it—doing it only for its novelty or shock factor—I felt a bit saddened that the real purpose of the challenge was getting lost," she says. "In India, a donation of rice (known as ‘Anndaan’) is among the best deeds a human being can do."
Using her connections via the rice news and research website Oryza.com, Kalanidhi started asking people to instead donate a bucket of rice or at least 100 rupees to charity, tagging photos with #ricebucketchallenge. 
Since launching her initiative, Kalanidhi has gained thousands of supporters and elicited interest from news outlets and philanthropists around the world. At last count, her Rice Bucket Challenge Facebook page had more than 43,000 likes; one man in Chennai donated three bags of rice worth 9,000 rupees within the first three hours of her challenge being posted.
A serious effort to fight hunger? That's something we at Ravishly can get behind. And thanks to a new partnership, that's exactly what we're doing.
We're working with Oryza and Kalanidhi to bring this India-based effort global. "In India, women play a prominent role in being the agents of donations, and I understand that Ravishly fights for women’s causes around the world," says Kalanidh of the collaboration. "Being associated with a woman's brand makes sense."
To expand upon this initiative, we're asking our own team, and their friends, and as many other people as possible through the power of Internet osmosis, to help fight hunger by doing two simple things:
1. Post a photo of yourself with a bucket of rice, tagged #ricebucketchallenge
2. Donate rice (or other food, or money—anything that will make an impact) to a local food bank. Or if you feel so compelled, take the rice to someone in need directly.
That's it.
The need for such action cannot be overstated.
Globally, a staggering 842 million people do not have enough to eat. Poor nutrition causes nearly half of deaths in children under five, with 3.1 million children passing away each year from a lack of food. In the U.S. alone, some 17.6 million households are food insecure, meaning about 14.5% of households know what it's like to contend with the devastating impacts of hunger.
"Hunger is global," Kalanidhi says of her effort to reach more people around the world. "And rice (4 billion people in the world eat it) has a global demand."
Join this effort, and help Kalanidhi expand upon her mission to fight a global issue that effects all of us. All you need is a bucket of rice.
