Ethiopians race against poverty

By Damien Zane
BBC, Addis Ababa

High-profile Ethiopia's athletes have pledged to get actively involved in the country's efforts to alleviate poverty.

Gebresellasie will run with 11,000 other participants

The Olympic and world champion and world record breaker Haile Gebresellasie, probably the most famous Ethiopian alive along with his fellow champions, have said that they will take part in a six kilometre road race, which is being dubbed as a "race against poverty".

Ethiopia, unfortunately, is linked in most people's minds to two things - poverty and fast running.

And organiser Selome Tadesse says that she wants to use the one thing to fight the other.

"The awareness we are trying to create here is that there are things that we are winning - war and athletics and the message we want to send is that as much as winning the war and athletics, we can also win poverty," she said.

Self-help

Currently more than 12 million Ethiopians are living off food-aid because of last year's drought.

The mass charity fun-run is being organised by a group of Ethiopians who set up the "Birr for a Compatriot" campaign to get Ethiopians to help themselves.

About 12 million Ethiopians need food aid after the 2002 drought

Ms Selome is expecting that 11,000 people will take part in the fun-run on 7 September, alongside Gebresellasie, another Olympic champion Deratu Tulu and double cross country world champion Kenenisa Bekelle.

With a 15 Birr entrance fee, the race could raise just over 160,000 Birr ($20,000) - not much when the country's total requirement for assistance this year is over $500m.

But as the organisers have stressed this is all about Ethiopians doing something for themselves.

And as Ethiopia's chief athletics coach Woldemeskel Kostre says, the runners want to show their solidarity with their fellow Ethiopians.