The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on Jan. 5 agreed to give money from ticket sales of three up-coming matches under the AFC Asian Cup in Doha, Qatar, to the solidarity campaign “Professional Football against Hunger”.

The opening match of the cup between Qatar and Uzbekistan on Jan. 7 and two other matches of the host countries will be under the campaign.

AFC and FAO will also organise a competition day against hunger to call on nations, leaders and people to raise fund for the poor.

The purpose of this campaign is to mobilise the civil society in the fight against hunger and poverty and to raise funds to finance fighting hunger community projects.

The campaign is also aimed at urging football players and fans to sign an online petition calling on governments to give priority to fight hunger and mobilise donations for FAO's Telefood community-level food production projects.

Finance raised by the programme, which was launched in 1997, helped 1,000 poverty reduction projects in 100 countries./.