Blue Peterkicked off the appeal live on its BBC1 show in Co Durham last Friday when Boateng, who runs his own charity that makes donations to villages in his native Ghana, visited the Aycliffe store.
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George with the Blue Peter team |
“I was delighted to help launch this appeal,” said the Boro star. “Angola is very deprived and its people need our help. I think this is a superb appeal and if we can do just a little bit to help reunite families then we are doing a wonderful thing.”
Until just two years ago a terrible war was raging in Angola. This has meant that many families have been separated and some parts of the country are completely cut off. Many roads are riddled with land mines, there is no postal service and very few people have access to a phone. Finding loved ones is therefore very difficult.
‘Tracing’ is the process of looking for relatives and putting them back in contact. Thousands of people are looking for each other. It could be a mother looking for her daughter, a sister looking for her brother or a boy looking for his grandfather.
The Blue Peter event is appealing to people to collect unwanted clothes and hand them in to their local British Red Cross charity shop. Money from the sales of these clothes will raise the money to trace people, send messages and re-unite families.
It’s easy to take part, just ask a volunteer in your local Red Cross shop for a special big Blue Peter bag and fill the bag with unwanted clothes and take them back to the shop. Every bag of clothes collected raises £10 towards the £250,000 target.
For more details on the appeal, visit: www.bluepeter.redcross.org.uk