Sport Aid’s global run to be repeated

Press, 7 May 1987, Page 6

Sport Aid’s global run to be repeated

NZPA-AP London Sport Aid’s “Race Against Time,” the charity run last year by about 20 million people in 89 countries, will be repeated in September next year, on a grander scale to help deprived children worldwide, organisers said. “This time we hope to involve every country and inhabited territory in the world. We understand there are 218,” said Sport Aid spokesman, Nick Cater. But the Irish rock singer, Bob Geldof, the brainchild of the anti-fam-ine Band Aid drive begun in 1984, which spawned Sport Aid, will be absent. “He has gone back to his career,” Cater said. “He said after the last race that it was time now for someone else to do something." Sport Aid said it has raised $60.1 million for famine victims in 25 African countries during the last year from a variety of sporting events,

most of it as a result of the global run. From the West African tropics to the foothills of the Himalayas and the capitals of Europe, millions of runners crowded the streets andsidewalks of 279 cities for the 10km global, race on May 25 last year. Another year-long programme to raise pledges, donations and merchandising to help needy children in mainly undeveloped countries will begin on September 6 this year, culminating with a second global jog on September 11 next year. “ChUdren are very interested in the aims of Sport Aid, and we want to focus attention on the suffering of children in the world,” Cater said. “It is simply unacceptable that nearly 15 million children are dying every year in the Third World.” Sport Aid ’BB will be launched on September 6 when children representing the six continents

will light a symbolic flame at the end of the world athletic championships in Rome, Cater said. Sport Aid also has tentative plans for simultaneous music concerts on six continents on the day of the global run, Cater said. They will be linked by satellite and broadcast live on television sets around the world. National sports organisations have been asked to organise sporting events to raise funds for Sport Aid’s children’s campaign, he said. The money raised by Sport Aid during the last year was divided between Band Aid and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). Band Aid, originally a group of top British pop stars brought together by Geldof to help the starving in Ethiopia, mushroomed into a world-wide charity that raised more than $261 million for Africa. However, with Band

Aid no longer raising money, conrtotrating instead on allocating it. Cater said 45 per cent of funds raised fry. Sport Aid ’BB will go to Unicef, 45 per cent to the' Red Cross and 10 per cent to organisations helping deprived children in : . developed countries. ' \ ' “We will help children world-wide, (but) Africa is still going to have most aid,” Cater said. He said that he expected the United States to contribute more this time. Sport Aid was a flop in America last year because the global run coincided with a nation-wide “Hands Across America” campaign, to raise funds for the poor and homeless. "The United States left itself out of one of the most amazing .events of 1986,” he Said. “We are very concerned the States should be on board this time.”