LOS ANGELES: With an impressive 250,000 people over 14 years raising nearly $30 million dollars in an attempt to end global poverty the Aga Khan Partnership expects to draw an estimated 5,000 people October 12 to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at 3911 South Figueroa Street next Sunday. Registration begins at 9 am with the walk actually beginning at 11 am. There will be interactive and educational exhibits and entertainment.
The “Partnership Walk” which also involves a multi-city participation across the US is a way for people of all races and religions to demonstrate their support and build partnerships aimed at ending global poverty. “Partnership Walk is a public event to raise awareness and funds that help communities in Africa and Asia become self-reliant,” reports Shaheen-Kassim Lakha, who is affiliated with the Aga Khan Partnership.
Partnership Walk is a national event, held since 1995 in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles. The Walk brings together families, community organizations, students and leaders in government, business, media and the arts for a day of entertainment, learning activities and fundraising. Unlike some non-profit organizations one hundred percent of the funds raised at Partnership Walk go directly to projects supported by the Foundation; not a cent is spent on administrative costs. AKF USA is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. The Foundation’s work improves health, education and living standards in some of the poorest communities in Africa and Asia through grassroots self-help programs.
Programs focus on reducing illiteracy, hunger, disease and poverty in countries such as Afghanistan, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Tanzania. Aga Khan Foundation presently is engaged in over 100 programs in 18 countries and is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network. In India, the Aga Khan Foundation is working to improve children’s health where almost 10 percent of children under the age of five in South Asia die each year from easily preventable causes such as diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria.
These children often do not survive because of parental ignorance or because communities in remote regions do not have access to affordable and effective lifesaving interventions like oral rehydration solution (ORS) for diarrhea, antibiotics to treat respiratory infections, and antimalarial tablets. Safe motherhood and child survival initiatives have long been top priorities of healthcare agencies of the Aga Khan Development Network in India.
The walk’s theme is “Planting Our Future” which spotlights the extraordinary success, expansion and impact of Aga Khan Foundation’s rural support programs, initiated in northern Pakistan in 1982 and expanded to nine other countries. The story of AKF’s rural support programs brings to light the power of partnerships and reflects the Foundation’s enduring commitment to community participation and grassroots democracy.
It embraces the time-tested principle of helping people to help themselves.The Foundation works in partnership with other institutions dedicated to international development such as the US Agency for International Development, US Department of Agriculture, US Environmental Protection Agency, the World Bank as well as private foundations and corporations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Citigroup Foundation, Microsoft Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, among others.
Greg Heffernan
India Post News Service
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