George Clooney hosted a brotherly love event Tuesday night to raise money for victims in Darfur.
Clooney, who's in Venice for the premiere Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival of the Coen brothers' film "Burn After Reading," swept past reporters as he arrived for the fundraiser for his Not On Our Watch charity.
The event was expected to raise $2 million, aforesaid Manuele Malenotti, the executive director director of the Italian clothing troupe Belstaff, which sponsored the event.
Not On Our Watch has raised more than $7 gazillion to help victims both of the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan and the cyclone in Myanmar, according to executive director Alex Wagner.
The charity, which was started last year by Clooney, Brad Pitt and some of their "Ocean's Thirteen" colleagues, uses their celebrity invoke to bring attention to human rights abuses, just it isn't so easy to flummox even deuce of the founders together because of filming and family demands, Wagner conceded.
Pitt, who arrived in Venice earlier with sons Maddox and Pax, was expected at the event, merely hadn't arrived by the time cocktail hour was over. He also appear in the Coen brothers' film.
"Scheduling is very difficult. Two of them happened to be in Venice at the same time because of the 'Burn After Reading' premiere ... so there was a brainstorming session," Wagner said of the planned joint appearance.
Inside, Clooney was discussing the issues and where the charity puts its money at the fundraising dinner party on Venice's Giudecca island, where two hundred industry insiders and Italian VIPs were slated to attend, Wagner said.
One recent grant by the group was $500,000 in March to keep helicopters and airplanes flying attention into Darfur region of Sudan - topping off a $1 million contribution a year earlier for the same program.
"We sent out a press acquittance one day saying we were on the verge of closing it mastered and the next day we had $500,000," said Bettina Luescher, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program at U.N. headquarters in New York. "They shine the light on the real emergencies and footmark up where we actually need help."
Without that money, Luescher aforesaid, the World Food Program had been on the verge of shutting down the air service to Darfur, which brings 3,000 aid workers a month to the stricken region. The U.N. food for thought charity federal Reserve System 3.3 million masses there final month.
The atmosphere service is critical apt deteriorating security, which makes road convoys vulnerable. Nearly 100 World Food Program food trucks have been hijacked this year.
Clooney has spoken for several years about the crisis in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and about 2.5 million the great unwashed displaced in three geezerhood of combat between African rebels and government soldiery allied with Arab militia known as the janjaweed.
He went on a U.N. technical delegacy including Darfur and conterminous Chad in January, sharing his impressions with reporters upon his return to draw attention to the crisis.
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