UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura receives Peace Messenger Katherine Davies after her 600-mile trek across Europe

    GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, May 25, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- After walking 600 miles from London to Geneva, Katherine Davies met on Friday with the top United Nations diplomat working to end the Syrian civil war and presented him with messages for peace from people around the world.

Davies is founder and CEO of iguacu (www.weareiguacu.com), a global platform for effective giving, which includes Syria in its coverage. She walked almost 1,000 kilometers across Europe and collected messages from ordinary people worldwide through social media and at www.message4peace.com. The campaign's goal: to express the public voice to add pressure to end the Syrian war.

Through #message4peace, people have called for an urgent end to the war that has killed an estimated 470,000 people and displaced 13.5 million. Katherine presented messages Friday to Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy for Syria who has been working to maintain a fragile truce in the nation's brutal five-year-old civil war.

Mr. de Mistura warmly welcomed the initiative and thanked Katherine and the iguacu community for providing a channel to express the public voice for peace.

"This campaign helps to bring the focus of the Syrian crisis where it belongs," he said. "These moving messages from around the world in solidarity with the Syrian people remind everyone that families and friends and loved ones like our own are at the heart of this catastrophe and desperate for peace. I will use these messages and wish to extend a special thanks to everyone who participated in this campaign."

Katherine met Mr. de Mistura on behalf of the thousands of people who engaged in the message4peace campaign. "I am honored to have been able to hand deliver everyone's messages to Mr. de Mistura and to have had the opportunity to reveal the heart of the public voice expressed through this campaign, and to me directly during the walk."

"Syrian families are starving. Children are being bombed, hospitals. This horrific tragedy touches us all," Katherine said. "Along the walk it was very moving to witness everyone's reactions, no matter who they were, their age, occupation, preoccupations, once I explained message4peace. They would stop what they were doing, add a message and share how they were very disturbed by the suffering of Syrians."

"The walk was also revealing in what it taught me about personal power and our connection to the world around us. People too readily give their power away," she said. "They think there's nothing they can do. But we have more power than we think."

To connect with Katherine, contact Executive Publicist Michelle Tennant Nicholson at 828-749-3200 or email [email protected]

About Katherine Davies and #message4peace: Creator of #message4peace, Katherine Davies walked 600 miles across Europe to raise awareness about the Syrian crisis and to help express the collective public voice to pressure for an end to the 5-year-old Syrian war. Katherine is founder and CEO of iguacu (pronounced igwah-soo), a global platform for effective giving. iguacu's country coverage includes Syria. The iguacu community helped to spread the word and people from around the world shared messages on message4peace.com and posted messages on social media with #message4peace. The campaign attracted support from thousands of people, with more than 7000 social media interactions, and received the support of two Nobel Peace laureates. On May 20, 2016, in Geneva, Katherine hand delivered the messages to the head of the peace talks, the UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.

Learn more at www.message4peace.com and www.weareiguacu.com.

# # #