New Video Documents Kids Effort to Inspire KFC to Change

Four North Carolina Youth Travel to Louisville to Deliver Over 6000 Postcards Asking Major Fast Food Company to “Be an environmental leader for change”

Asheville, NC – On March 3rd, four elementary school children from the Charlotte, North Carolina area made the 350 mile journey to Louisville, Kentucky to deliver over 6,000 hand-drawn postcards to corporate executives at KFC.  They collected the postcards from youth across North Carolina urging KFC to be a leader for environmental change by using more recycled paper and no longer buying paper that comes from endangered forests on the North Carolina coast. 

Today, Dogwood Alliance released a video documenting these inspiring children’s journey.  The video tells the story in their words about why forests and wildlife should not be harmed to make fast food packaging and how KFC can be a leader for environmental change for their generation.  You can watch the video here.

“I had a second grade project to be an environmental activist,” said 10 year old Cole, the child who inspired this work.  “I found that the forests in NC are being cut down and animals are being endangered and so I did [work to get] McDonald’s to change and they switched to 100% post-consumer recycled bags.  Now I am doing KFC.”

In the spring of 2009, Cole took on protecting the animals and forests of the North Carolina Coast as part of a school project.  His first efforts which included recruiting twenty-five friends at Mountain Island Elementary School and collecting over 2000 postcards to McDonald’s and Charlotte-based Bojangles landed him a detailed response from McDonald’s outlining their packaging initiatives, a story about his work in Ranger Rick and the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes.

This time around Cole recruited seven elementary schools, including his new school in Davidson, NC, to take part in the campaign and over a few months, Cole and his friends managed to collect over 6000 postcards to KFC.  Since executives at KFC failed to respond to his emails, Cole, his sister Kaela and two of his closest friends, Nik and Liam, decided with their parents’ permission, to make the journey to the company’s headquarters in Kentucky.

“I think this is a great idea and doing this will make a great impact on the world,” said Nik, who made the journey with Cole. “KFC is such a big company that everybody is probably going to follow in their footsteps.”

Though the children were able to hand-deliver the postcards, the executives made no promises to change.  With this amazing experience under their belt, the kids are ready to keep taking their important message to KFC until they change.  Recently McDonald’s adopted an industry leading environmental paper packaging standard, and unfortunately KFC has failed to take meaningful action and so the kids’ campaign continues.

“My TD (Gifted & Talented program) teacher Ms. Beard has always told me to have a voice, not just grown-ups can do stuff, kids do to,” continued Cole. “Because if you have a voice you can do things that people don’t expect and you can, and kind of bring out your true character.”

According to the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental organization working to protect the forests of the Southern US, KFC buys its packaging, including its iconic bucket, from paper companies including International Paper that are destroying endangered forests on the North Carolina coast.  Cole originally learned about this important issue after reading the organization’s website and contacting one of their staff members.

# # #

You can watch the full video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIQUcDt1dhE

To learn more about Cole’s work: http://www.barronprize.org/sites/default/files/ColeRasenbergerDavidsonNews.pdf and http://www.dogwoodalliance.org/content/view/295/122/

To see photos of the kids at work collecting postcards: https://picasaweb.google.com/100044665589662913219/December2010PostcardSigningForColeSCause?feat=email#

To read about Cole on the Gloria Barron page: http://www.barronprize.org/2010