Clooney and pals give big money for World Food Program

By M&C People Mar 16, 2008, 4:06 GMT

01/07/2008 - George Clooney - © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

George Clooney and his "Ocean's Eleven" pals have turned on the charm and turned up the volume over their outrage on the genocide in Darfur: $500,000. was raised for the United Nations World Food Program.

Hollywood elite actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon are united in their charitable group: Not On Our Watch, and they announced on Thursday they had donated a half million dollars to the United Nations World Food Program to help stop hunger in Darfur.

The WFP uses helicopters to send support people and food to Northern Sudan and into the Darfur region that has seen a massive influx of refugees in the war ravaged region.

"Without immediate additional funding, humanitarian aid in the region will be crippled," Clooney said in a statement obtained by the A.P.

This is not the first time the Clooney-backed charitable group, known as Not On Our Watch, has donated money to the U.N. group. Friends of the World Food Program — a nonprofit group that helps build support for the WFP — said Not On Our Watch gave $1 million to the WFP in 2007.

Actress Drew Barrymore also donated $1 million of her own money to the WFP in an effort to stop world hunger.

The WFP reportedly needs to make $77 million in 2008 to sustain its operations.

Darfur has been at the center of a bloody conflict between the Sudanese government, and non-Arab rebels.