With pledges and check donations, I have raised $2,000. Every donation makes change -- please contribute to a better future for Africa's 18 million AIDS orphans.

That's right, I said 18 million. When I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2007, there were 13 million.

There is a whole generation of kids without leaders, teachers, and, of course, parents. That is where we come in...


Global Alliance for Africa (Tax Exempt ID E-9940-2068-02) , which is based in Chicago, partners with local African NGOs, religious institutions, and community-based organizations with the aim of helping households and communities to become self-reliant and to build the capacities to provide orphans and vulnerable children with shelter, education, health care, food security, psycho-social support, and legal services.

Here's how your donation can help:
$400 funds an urban water program
$375 buys a water pump for an agricultural initiative
$150 funds a youth's educational fees for one year
$130 buys a bookcase for a library
$100 funds vocational training for an adolescent for one year
$50 buys a reading table for a library
$35 buys a goat

Thank you for your support!

This is the final event in my Save the World Diet initiative. Here is a little more about my year of getting healthy and helping the world....

So far in 2009, Kara Richardson Whitely has run in Central Park at midnight for UNICEF, jumped in icy Lake Champlain, Vt. for Special Olympics, walked amid monkeys and alligators for the MS Society, walked/jogged where Washington slept for National Parks and walked the Flying Pig Marathon course to benefit the American Heart Association. She is taking on a physical event for charity each month of the year -- an initiative she calls the Save the World Diet.

Now it's time for the biggest challenge yet, a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro for Global Alliance for Africa's AIDS Orphans programs.

Kara's Save the World Diet movement -- of taking action steps toward better health and a better world -- was inspired by her 2007 trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. The journey to Africa's highest peak was not only a celebration of her 120-pound weight loss, it was a fund raiser for Global Alliance for Africa's AIDS orphans programs. She couldn't justify not getting out of bed to train when a child needed fresh water, an education, a chance.

After the birth of her daughter a year later, she was left with about 50 pounds of baby weight to lose all over again. She remembered how motivating it was to be working for a cause as well as a fitness goal. She signed up for an event each month of 2009, knowing that it would allow her to go from feeling helpless about her weight and the problems in the world to feeling empowered and strong.

So far this year, she's down several pounds, feeling great and has raised thousands of dollars for charities.

By the year's end her treks up mountains and down the scale will help AIDS orphans and those with Leukemia & Lymphoma.She will also dance for food at a Cancan for Hunger, and bicycle 220 miles from Hershey, Pa. (away from all of that chocolate) to New York City for Breast Cancer patients. The year will end with another Kilimanjaro trek for AIDS orphans.

**Please support Global Alliance for Africa's AIDS orphans programs on behalf of her trek, the Save the World Diet finale!!**

Thank you!