The Point

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Walking together


Hey, remember when I was talking about the Gulu Walk, that really cool thing these guys in Toronto started that I went down and did last year without really knowing what it was? It's happening again. I've had someone wander by the site looking for information on it, so I talked to Lillian Du and Jamil Jivraj, the Edmonton organisers, and here's the rundown.

We're meeting at 10.30 at McIntyre Park (the little Gazebo park by the Varscona, just on 83rd and 104th St) on Saturday, October 21st. That's this weekend. Speeches and registration start about then and the walk itself starts at about 11.30, they say. The walk is 11 km long in support of kids in northern Uganda (called 'night commuters' by some) who walk distances longer than that into the city every night so they don't get raped or abducted or forced into the army at night in their villages. Both sides in Uganda have violated terms of the tentative peace agreements signed earlier this year, so raising awareness about this and putting pressure on the international community to step up efforts to end the conflict is more important than ever. I don't use that phrase much, I don't think, so there you go.

This year, the walk is being held in over 70 cities around the world, including Vancouver, Toronto, Saskatoon, Beijing, Washington, Kampala, Amsterdam, Nairobi, Houston, Brisbane... and of course, Gulu. I am, of course, accepting donations, but if you can't afford to donate right now, just find a walk near you and go anyway. More info is available at guluwalk.com and if you're in Edmonton, Lillian and Jamil can be reached at wakadogo_edmonton at... hotmail dot com. I presume you can add that all together.

Labels: , ,

posted by Christopher at 12:17 a.m.

0 Comments:

Add a comment

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.