Ethiopian Review

Addis Ababa -Ethiopians in their several thousands took to the streets on Sunday joining in WFP’s Walk-the-World 2009, an event that coupled fun with helping end child hunger. The program staged in 70 countries expected half-a-million walkers.

WFP Deputy Country Director Felix Gomez told the about 3,000 men and women who walked the 5-km. distance that the END HUNGER initiative was staged to raise funds and awareness on a serious note that should reverberate across all corners of the globe.

Thousands in Hawassa, Dessie, Diredawa, Gambella, Gode, Jijjiga, Mekelle and Adama also walked.

Gomez said the event is a growing movement that is trying to draw attention to the issues of child hunger and through that to help reduce the number of chronically hungry people in the world.

“This in a sense therefore is support to the UN’s Millennium Development Goal One on halving the number of chronically hungry people in the world by the year 2015,” said Gomez.

Citing statistics from FAO, Gomez said 850 million people in the world are exposed to hunger, and there are 300 million hungry children around the globe 100 million of them unable to go to school. “…staggering,” he said of the figures.

Currently the United Nations World Food Programme in Ethiopia is assisting around half a million school children through school feeding program at hundreds of schools across the country, according to Gomez.

Now in its seventh year, the annual event has become WFP’s foremost, global advocacy event.

“The world has more than enough food, more than enough money, more than enough expertise to feed every man, woman and child on the planet,” he said.

This may be one more testimony to the truth of the oft quoted claim: “Every child that dies of hunger in the modern time has been killed.”

Gomez’s tone was a positive one, however. “…Fight Hunger: Walk the World is about helping to create the will for change,” he said. “And that change will come.”

- ENA