A charitable group co-founded by Hollywood A-listers George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon announced on Thursday it had given $500,ooo 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 more specifically into the Darfur region that, over recent years, has seen a giant influx of refugees in the war ravaged area.

“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 non profit group that helps build support for the WFP–said Not On Our Watch gave $1 million to the WFP in 2007.

Earlier this month, 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. Experts believe some 200,000 people have died in the conflict and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes since fighting began in 2003.

WENN

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