Thousands rally in London to end child poverty

Thousands gathered in London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday to urge the British government to commit more money to tackling child poverty, which it has promised to end by 2020. Organisers said 10,000 people - police estimated 4-5,000 - attended the rally to urge the government to add three billion pounds (5.3 billion dollars, 3.8 billion euros) to next year's budget to tackle the problem.
Campaigners estimate about 3.9 million British children live in poverty - about one in three, the worst rate in the industrialised world. The government defines families as poor if their household income is less than 60 percent of the median, while the End Child Poverty coalition defines it as when a family has an average of 10 pounds (18 dollars) a day or less per person to live on. Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with leaders of the coalition of about 120 campaign groups at his Downing Street office on Saturday, before he headed to Paris for a summit on the financial crisis.