MANILA, Philippines (Eagle News Service) — A spokesperson for SGV, the official accounting and auditing firm hired to help observe the Iglesia Ni Cristo Worldwide Walk for Yolanda survivors in its Metro Manila site, said they have already validated 96,000 of those who participated in the INC charity walk.
Leo Matignas, an SGV partner, said that this count was as of 2:20 p.m. This number already exceeded the 77,500 participants in Singapore’s “The New Paper Big Walk 2000” which is the current Guinness world record holder for the “largest charity walk” in the world.
The SGV people, however, have not yet finished counting all the wristband stickers surrendered by the “walkers” who have reached the finish line.
Matignas said he hoped the SGV people would finish counting all the wristbands by 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb.15.
As of 10 a.m., police gave a crowd estimate of 1.5 million people, representing those who attended the Metro Manila site of the Iglesia Ni Cristo Worldwide Walk for survivors of supertyphoon Yolanda who occupied the whole of Roxas Boulevard in Manila.
Police Senior Supt. Gilbert Cruz of the Manila Police District said the 1.5 million estimate he gave was still a conservative crowd estimate as more people continued to stream into the Metro Manila site of the INC’s charity walk, which organizers expect would set a new world record.
The “walkathon” started at 6 a.m., an hour earlier than the scheduled 7 a.m. walk in front of the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex along Roxas Boulevard in Manila.
Participants have to complete a distance of at least 1.6 kilometers and beat the current record for the largest charity walk held by Singapore which had 77,500 participants set on May 21, 2000. This was Singapore’s The New Paper Big Walk 2000 that started from the Singapore National Stadium.
As of 11 a.m., however, the SGV had so far validated only 31,000 of the walkathon sticker-wristbands surrendered by the “walkers” at the finish line.
SGV’s Matignas said they only counted sticker-wristbands that had not been torn in two or had not stuck up. Sticker strips served as wristbands for the walk. The problem was that that collected stickers stored in boxes stuck side by side and were hard to separate, Matignas explained. They thus have to count mountains of collected sticky wristbands.
SGV and Guinness World Record officials have partnered in this project of the INC, particularly its socio-civic arm, the Felix Y. Manalo Foundation Inc., to set a new world record for the largest charity walk in a single site.
Kirsty Bennet is the Guinness adjudicator who came to the Philippines for the INC’s Worldwide Walk for Yolanda survivors.
Organizers expect the SGV to complete the counting of all the collected wristbands Saturday evening.
The Manila site is just one of 140 sites of the worldwide walk, 85 of which are in Manila.
The whole stretch of Roxas Boulevard from Airport Road to Rizal Park was filled with people as of 10 a.m.
People started to come in as early as 12 midnight, especially the delegates from Cavite and Pampanga. By 3 a.m., people were starting to fill up the roads, said Police Insp. Tomasito Corpuz of Baywalk Police Community Precinct.
