Hershey Empowers the Next Generation With Youth Development Initiatives and Creative Collaborations
Originally published in Hershey's 2023 ESG Report
Hershey believes passionately in supporting youth development to ensure that young people have the skills they need to succeed in all aspects of life.
We were proud to deepen our support for youth development programs through two social impact campaigns. Together with our nonprofit partners, we found new ways to create authentic and meaningful collaborations that allowed the talent and unique contributions of young people to shine through.
Empowering Young Women
Beyond our collaboration with Girl Up and Girls on the Run for the Future CEO program launch on International Women’s Day, we supported them by:
- Sponsoring and showing up for Girls on the Run 5K races in five communities across the U.S.
- Providing 11 Hershey employees to serve as mentors for Girl Up’s first-ever alumnae mentorship program, an intensive three-month initiative
Celebrating Creativity
Hershey continued its partnership with Memphis Music Initiative (MMI), as part of KIT KAT®’s Black Music Month campaign. The campaign expanded its geographic focus to include partnerships with five additional creative youth development nonprofits in cities across the U.S.
The campaign:
- Celebrated the next generation of Black creatives 105
- Connected participating organizations, staff and young people to build relationships and learn from one another
- Convened young people from each organization to join a national youth advisory council that met regularly with Hershey employees to advise on the campaign, packaging design and amplification strategy
- Shared insights from Hershey employees on careers and how to plan and execute creative marketing campaigns
The participating organizations were:
- Memphis Music Initiative of Memphis, Tennessee
- We Are Culture Creators of Detroit, Michigan
- DC Strings of Washington, DC
- Urban Word of New York, New York
- The Harmony Project of Los Angeles, California
- Trombone Shorty Foundation of New Orleans, Louisiana
"The young people were deeply impacted… It’s hard to capture the singular experience of a young person seeing something they contributed to making in the public eye. For them to go into a store and find a product that was informed by their feedback and feature young people that look like them — is a powerful moment of representation.”
Kathy Lindenmayer, Director of Development,
Memphis Music Initiative
