01.08.06 – Former child soldier Kassim ‘The Dream’ Ouma will be stepping back into the ring for GuluWalk on Saturday, August 5 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Ouma, the number one contender for the World Junior Middleweight title, will have the GuluWalk logo emblazoned on both his robe and his trunks when he enters the ring in front of a worldwide audience on HBO..
‘The Dream’ (24-2-1) will be battling New York native Sechew Powell (20-0-0), with a victory putting the Ugandan in line for a possible world title fight. This match comes just three months after Ouma’s victory over Marco Antonio Rubio on the undercard of the much-anticipated return to the ring of ‘The Golden Boy’, Oscar De La Hoya in June.
Along with supporting GuluWalk in the ring, Ouma and the Philadelphia boxing community will lead the Philadelphia GuluWalk, joining 75 cities worldwide on Saturday, October 21.
Starting next week, GuluWalk launch their new campaign and will be looking for 10,000 reasons for hope in northern Uganda. Visit www.guluwalk.com to find out more.
In 1984, Ouma was kidnapped by the rebel National Resistance Army at the tender age of five, along with his entire primary school class. He was forced to fight in unspeakable conditions and spent five years with the NRA, which was led by current Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, before being reunited with his family 1989.
“We all have a role to play in the future of these children, said Ouma, who is from the village of Busia, which is on the Kenyan border in southeastern Uganda. “I’m proud to be an ambassador for GuluWalk and to tell the story of kids in northern Uganda who are still not getting the help they need.”
GuluWalk is a Canadian-led event that started as a way to better understand the ordeal of the ‘night commuters’ of northern Uganda. It has now grown into an urgent, impassioned worldwide movement for peace. GuluWalk will go global once again in October of 2006 and will continue to raise awareness and money to support children’s programs in northern Uganda.
Not only do the children ‘night commute’ in northern Uganda, but over 1.7-million displaced persons have been forced into abhorrent conditions in camps where over 1,000 people are dying every week because of a lack of clean water, food and medical care. These camps are a horrifically inadequate protection strategy and the only answer for the Acholi of northern Uganda is peace.
About GuluWalk:
In July of 2005, Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward embarked on a 31-day walk, GuluWalk, to raise awareness for a humanitarian emergency thousands of miles away, for children they’d never met and for a nation they’d never even stepped foot in.
In the spring of last year is when Bradbury and Hayward first heard the stories of the ‘night commuters’ of northern Uganda. They kept reading these unbelievable accounts of children, as many as 40,000, who would walk every night from rural villages into the town of Gulu and other urban centres to sleep in relative safety and to avoid abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
The plight of these children sparked the idea for GuluWalk, a 31-day ‘night commute’ in support of these courageous kids. Every evening in July of 2005, Bradbury and Hayward walked 12.5 km into downtown Toronto to sleep in front of city hall. After about fours hours sleep they made the trek home at sunrise, all while continuing to work full-time and attempting to maintain their usual daily routine.
There was a worldwide response to the GuluWalk that resulted in GuluWalk Day on October 22, which saw over 15,000 people in 38 cities worldwide take the first international step towards telling the story of the children of northern Uganda. GuluWalk Day attracted people of all nationality, colour, race and religion in a global show of support for the innocent victims of the world’s most ignored humanitarian emergency.
About Athletes for Africa:
Along with GuluWalk, Bradbury also founded Athletes for Africa, a charitable organization that uses the profile of sport to raise awareness and funds for sustainable development programs on the ground in Africa.