ROME – The annual End Hunger: Walk the World initiative mobilised an estimated 150,000 people to raise awareness and funds for a programme that provides school meals to poor children.

At least 153 walks took place in 70 countries across all 24 time zones, raising enough money to provide a whole year of meals for 10,000 schoolchildren.

Wave of solidarity

“In an incredible wave of solidarity, the world came forward to say that child hunger is totally unacceptable,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

The biggest walk took place in Burkina Faso, where some 20,000 participants gathered in Ouagadougou for an event organized by first lady Chantal Compaore. The smallest walk counted just one participant in New Zealand, where a determined TNT employee braved stormy weather on his own, in the name of the fight against hunger.

For the first time this year, a walk was held in Iraq, in the town of Erbil in the Kurdistan Region, in order to highlight the risk of food insecurity for schoolchildren there.

Walking On

Other walks brought the word on hunger to some of the world’s most treasured heritage sites, from Rome’s Piazza del Popolo to the ancient city of Jerash in Jordan; the Sri Lankan beachside town of Negombo to Indonesia’s buzzing capital Jakarta; from the rural town of Mulanje in Malawi to Manhattan’s Battery Park.

Now in its eighth year, Walk the World is sponsored by three of WFP’s private partners: global mail service TNT, consumer goods company Unilever, and nutrition and life-science specialists DSM.