By DPA,
New York : Drawing on their worldwide fame as football stars, Brazil’s Ronaldo and France’s Zinedine Zidane are to play in a match next month to highlight an anti-poverty campaign, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said.
Both will captain two international teams of renowned footballers in a friendly match Nov 17 in Fes, Morocco. This will be the sixth annual Match Against Poverty organised by UNDP to mobilise global action on poverty.
“The primary objective of the event is to mobilize the public in the fight against poverty and to promote the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to halve world poverty by 2015,” UNDP said.
There will be eight more games between 2008 and 2015, the proceeds of which will go toward the campaign.
Ronaldo and Zidane are both UNDP goodwill ambassadors and help to promote the MDGs, which include halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, ending poverty and hunger, ensuring universal primary education for all children and ending maternal and child mortality.
“We need to team up against poverty to help fulfil the MDG commitments by 2015,” Ronaldo said.
“It is extremely motivating to see that the Match Against Poverty is reaching wider and wider audiences. This is the match that we all need to win.”
UNDP said proceeds from previous games supported anti-poverty programmes in more than a dozen countries such as Vietnam, Namibia, Niger, Sri Lanka and Tajikistan.