At least 700,000 people in over 100 countries are on Sunday, 13 May 2007, expected to walk five kilometers to highlight the battle against child hunger, organised by The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and its partners.

The demonstration will be focused on hungry children and the Millennium Development Goal of having the proportion of hungry people globally by 2015.

Participants to the event, according to reports from the WFP Banjul office, will include children from Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Some 100,000 children are expected to walk in sub-Saharan Africa alone.  Most of these are beneficiaries of WFP’s innovative and hugely successful school feeding programme.

To support the work of WFP, “fight hunger: Walk the world” was initiated four year ago by TNT, global provider of express, mail and logistics services.  The event is the primary organising vehicle for engaging citizens globally in the struggle to achieve an end to child hunger and meet the first Millennium Development Goal.

“Fight hunger: Walk the world is about creating a movement to end children hunger,” said Malcolm Duthie, WFP Country Representative.  “By engaging citizens from rich and poor countries alike, governments worldwide will heed the call, and will do more to end child hunger.  Without citizens’ action, the status quo will remain.”

In The Gambia, over 500 people participated in a 5km-walk in Banjul, to indicate their concern for tackling the problem of worldwide hunger last year. Over D90, 000 for WFP’s school feeding project in The Gambia was raised. This year’s walk will be celebrated at the July 22nd Square (Banjul): Basse, Soma and Brikama, respectively.