WHAT comes first, 190 million chickens or an egg?

Easter has come and gone, and we'll have chomped our way through £320 million worth of boxed chocolate Easter eggs.

Great though chocolate is, did you know that that much cash could instead buy an astounding 190 million chickens for poor families in the developing world?

These chickens could produce 47.5 billion eggs a year to eat, sell or hatch more chickens!

Across the UK, 80 per cent of us buy chocolate at Easter but, in the space of a whole year, only around 67 per cent of people in the UK will give to charity.

OK, so chocolate's fun, but so is charity if you buy from World Vision's alternative gift catalogue.

Rather than just dropping money into a collection tin, the catalogue lets you buy a life-changing "present" for family or friends of 10 chickens which can then be sent to a family in Uganda or Honduras for only £17.

Even if we spent a fraction of the £320 million we spend on boxed Easter eggs on supporting poor families, we could begin to hatch a way out of poverty for those most in need.

More than 300 million Cadbury's crme eggs are produced, and presumably consumed, each year. We spend over £100 million just buying these.

Easter is a good time to think of people less fortunate across the world and give them the means to have eggs all year round to feed their families.

For these families, a chicken will give them eggs for life, not just Easter.

See World Vision's gift catalogue online at www.great-gifts.org or by calling 0845 075 7574. Help crack poverty.

Andrea Stephens

World Vision UK

599 Avebury Boulevard

Milton Keynes