Walk to raise US $100,000 to fight child hunger

As part of charity walks organised worldwide by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Sunday, proceeds from the five-kilometre one held on the slopes of Africa's highest mountain, Kilimanjaro, hoped to raise US $100,000 towards the agency's school feeding programme in the country. Similar walks - dubbed "Fight Hunger: Walk the World" - were held in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam; the political capital, Dodoma, and the towm of Kigoma. The WFP hopes to raise $2.5 million globally from the walks this year, compared with over $1 million raised in 2005. "The school feeding programme is an incentive to encourage children to enrol in schools and attend regularly," Patrick Buckley, the WFP country director, said on Monday in the northern Tanzanian town of Moshi, which is on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. At least 190,000 children in Tanzania are benefiting from the feeding programme, Buckley said. These children go to schools in the regions of Arusha, Manyara, Dodoma and Singida. "The WFP's main goal in Tanzania is to contribute towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and the national priorities of the government," he said. In addition to the school feeding programme, the WFP is also providing support to over 800,000 people, including refugees, rural communities and households affected by HIV/AIDS across the nation. Tanzanian Prime Minister Edward Lowassa, who led the walk along the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, said the WFP school feeding programme had contributed greatly to the improvement of school attendance, especially among pastoralist communities. "The walk is a symbol that no man should die of hunger," Lowassa said. The Rome-based deputy executive director of WFP, Sheilu Sisulu, took part in the Mount Kilimanjaro walk. At the same time, Lowassa decried the fact that the HIV/AIDS pandemic was claiming the lives of "many talented and youthful" Tanzanians. He added that the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to the HIV-positive patients was not sufficient if they did not have a good diet. "They will perish," Lowassa said. "Unsafe affairs must be stopped or else many more young people will have wasted their qualifications as they will die." He announced that a similar walk would be organised in June to raise funds for needy HIV-positive patients. "We must help these young people prolong their lives," he said. An estimated 1.6 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania. WFP organised the walks worldwide to call for an end to child hunger. "This will be the most comprehensive and diverse demonstration in history focused on hungry children and the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people globally by 2015," the agency said in a statement issued on Saturday. It said more than 700,000 people in over 100 countries across 24 time zones were expected to walk five kilometres to highlight the battle against child hunger. Some 100,000 children were expected to walk in sub-Sahara Africa alone - most of them beneficiaries of WFP’s school feeding programme. "By walking, these children are joining a growing chorus of voices across every demographic and every region of the world saying that it is unacceptable that 300 million children are chronically hungry in the world today," WFP said. WFP said TNT, the global provider of express, mail and logistics services initiated the "Fight Hunger: Walk the World" three years ago. "Fight Hunger: Walk the World is about creating a movement to end child hunger," Arlene Mitchell, the director of Walk the World for WFP, said. "By engaging citizens from rich and poor countries alike, governments worldwide will heed the call, and will do more to end child hunger," she said. "Without citizen action, the status quo will remain. But with it, we can help to end the unnecessary suffering of children."