CHURCHES across Croxley Green were wrapped in white bands last weekend to highlight the continuing campaign to end global poverty.

Campaigners from the Three Rivers Make Poverty History group wrapped local churches, including Croxley Baptist, Methodist and St. Oswald's, in the bands to remind passers-by of the ongoing campaign.

The action coincided with the UN Millennium Goals Summit taking place in New York this week.

Local campaigner Paul Langston said: "In 2000 the leaders of the world's richest countries signed up to some honourable goals to halve world poverty by the year 2015.

"Five years on, this summit is a chance for the same leaders to review their progress, or rather lack of it, to achieving these goals.

"White bands are appearing all over the world to remind world leaders that the world is still watching and waiting for them to make poverty history. Our action in Croxley Green is part of a global campaign that is going to continue until the world's richest governments take all of the possible steps needed to end poverty."

Make Poverty History is a coalition of more than 300 charities including Tearfund, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Comic Relief.

They estimate that 30,000 children are dying as a result of extreme poverty every day.