Top athlete appeals as WFP ops face closure

World marathon record holder Paul Tergat has appealed to the international community to support the World Food Programme's (WFP) school feeding projects in Angola after the UN food agency said a cash shortage could force it to pull out of the country entirely by March. Tergat, a double Olympic medallist and WFP ambassador, was a beneficiary of a similar school-feeding programme in the remote Kenyan village of Baringo when he was just seven years old. Speaking from experience, he said a hearty meal would entice kids back into the classroom and was vital to individual success and for the development of Angola as a whole. "The Angolan programme has almost come to a standstill because of lack of funding. It is important that the international community comes out with support to get this programme to move. If not, kids will end up on the street again, and this is not good," the Kenyan, now 36, told IRIN. "The critical thing is to support these children, to get them into school. This is a generation that we don't want to lose. Knowing how to read and write will give these children so many things - it is the key to life," he added. But WFP's Deputy Country Director Sonsoles Ruedas said that the agency, which has drastically pruned its operations in the face of funding shortages in the past, could be forced to pull out of Angola entirely. "We are very worried about the future of WFP in Angola. Unless we get further donations we might have to close shop - that means everything - in March," she said. In 2005 around 170,000 children in five provinces received a nutritious meal of blended corn and soya when they turned up for school. WFP hopes to extend this to 350,000 children in seven provinces if it can cobble together the US $12.4 million needed to fund the programme. Unless more cash is forthcoming, this project, as well as WFP food aid to around half a million hungry Angolans and its air service, which ferries more than 1,000 humanitarian workers to remote areas of the country every month, are at risk. The agency has only received 45 percent of the $161 million it requested for its two-year programme and needs $10 million or 15,000 tonnes of food to keep its operations running until March. But donors have been reluctant to plough more money into oil-rich Angola, arguing that almost four years of peace since the 27-year civil war ended should be time enough for the country to learn to fend for itself. "We have made a lot of effort to focus our programmes on those who need it most, but still there is this perception that Angola is a rich country - which it is - and that Angola should manage by itself - which it cannot, yet," Ruedas said.