Charity Wins Major Award

	Food For The Poor wins the Direct Marketing Association's prestigious 2013 International ECHO™ Ultimate Team Award. The international relief and development organization was honored for its direct mail campaign “A Stitch and a Prayer” during the 2013 ECHO™ Awards Ceremony & Gala at the McCormick Place West Convention Center in Chicago, Ill., Tuesday night.

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Oct. 16, 2013) – The Direct Marketing Association has awarded Food For The Poor its 2013 DMA International ECHO™ Ultimate Team Award. The international relief and development organization was honored for its direct mail campaign “A Stitch and a Prayer” during the 2013 ECHO Awards Ceremony & Gala at the McCormick Place West Convention Center in Chicago, Ill., Tuesday night.
Introduced in 1929 as the “Best in Direct Mail” contest, the DMA International ECHO™ Awards honor excellence in creativity, marketing strategy, and response results in direct marketing campaigns. 

“We are truly honored and humbled to have received the DMA’s golden trophy for the Ultimate Team category, because it really was a team effort for our organization to come up with this beautiful and powerful idea for this direct mail campaign,” said Angel Aloma, Executive Director of Food For The Poor. “More importantly, through a ‘Stitch and a Prayer’ more than 1,500 families will receive safe and secure two-room homes.” 

The campaign “A Stitch and a Prayer” focused on the life-threatening conditions of the poor living in areas of Nicaragua, Honduras and Jamaica. It highlighted the Reyes family’s ramshackle, makeshift hovel in Nicaragua that was literally stitched together with string. When Food For The Poor’s research team came across the Reyes’ home, the “A Stitch and a Prayer” was born. The charity’s Donor Relations department followed through with a strategic phone campaign.

DMA represents thousands of companies and nonprofit organizations that use and support data-driven marketing practices and techniques in 40 countries. With entries submitted by direct response agencies worldwide, DMA’s annual ECHO™ Awards recognize every type of media used in direct and interactive marketing campaigns.
DMA acknowledged that the number of entries in this year’s competition made the selection process particularly challenging for its judges.

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor.