In September my aunt Susanna and I are going to be running the New Forest Marathon (fingers crossed the ankles hold out) and we are so pleased to use this opportunity to support the invaluable charity, Kids for Kids, which has been transforming the lives of children and their families in Darfur, Sudan, for 23 years. With the current crisis there, warned by the UN to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, their support is more vital than ever before.

Kids for Kids started by providing goats for milk and hand pumps for clean water to communities in Darfur. They have gone on to change 590,000 lives with these and many other projects, providing donkeys and chickens, training midwives, first aiders and paravets, building first aid centres and kindergartens, and planting trees to combat climate change in the arid region.

However, with the war that broke out over a year ago, civilians in Sudan are facing extreme violence and the worst displacement crisis in the world. With the war raging, crops have not been planted, the country has become largely inaccessible to humanitarian relief and 26 million people are facing crisis levels of hunger (World Food Programme). Children are dying from starvation in Darfur.

Despite the ongoing violence, Kids for Kids are expecting a window of opportunity to provide Emergency Aid as soon as it is safe to do so and are planning a pilot project to get emergency food to six communities, buying seed and emergency supplies at local markets. All of the money that you donate will be put towards the Emergency Appeal.

You have all been brilliant with our previous fundraising efforts with half marathons (£1,105 in 2019 to repair a handpump and £1,235 in 2021 to provide goats and drought-resistant trees). Now the need for Emergency Aid is even more urgent than before - let's see if we can smash these sums by even more this time (it is the entire marathon after all)!

Check out the Kids for Kids website here to find out more about their work: https://www.kidsforkids.org.uk/

Here is a report from the UN from April which begins to outline the scale of the disaster in Sudan: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148791