Group’s Vigil Puts Hunger in Spotlight : Campaign: With candlelight gathering in Corona del Mar, it hopes to draw attention to plight of those suffering in Somalia and throughout the world.

NEWPORT BEACH —  With a soft summer breeze at their backs, a group of about 25 Orange County residents sang songs Sunday night and shared words of caring during a candlelight vigil for the dying children of Somalia.

“It’s been said when the people lead, the leaders will follow. It’s time to lead,” said Shirley Williams of Newport Beach, who led the vigil at Inspiration Point in Corona del Mar, overlooking the ocean.

“We are here to decry the calamity facing Somalia in Africa and around the world. We want to end the suffering,” she said.

According to Reuters news agency, hundreds of people are dying every day in the nation in the Horn of Africa, victims of drought, civil war and armed gangs who loot relief supplies.

Aid workers say about 4.5 million Somalis risk starvation, of whom at least 1.5 million are in desperate need.

Williams and her husband, Sumner, point out that there are no age or skin color barriers to hunger and starvation.

There is “something about how we Americans look at troubled people . . . we tend to ignore or seem immune to the plight of someone darker-skinned than ourselves,” Sumner Williams said.

Sadly, he said, small children also have less resistance to illness. Diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis are common, but mundane diarrhea is a bigger killer, draining the body of food and fluids before they can be absorbed.

The couple have been active for many years with RESULTS, an international organization formed to fight poverty and hunger. They help coordinate the South Orange County chapter of RESULTS.

Williams said their group lobbies major international political bodies such as the United Nations, pushing for increased relief on behalf of the estimated 40,000 children who die “unnecessarily” every day around the world.

“These children each day face a variety of things, in addition to hunger,” Sumner Williams said. “They suffer from diseases like pneumonia and die unnecessarily because large modern countries like the United States already have the modern medicines to combat the illnesses.”

Locally, he and his wife have begun a letter-writing campaign asking the Bush Administration, which recently began airlifting food and needed supplies into Somalia, to continue its support and expand the program.

“We need the United States, through our State Department, to get other countries to do something about the fighting there, to put a stop to it,” Williams said.

Sunday night, as the small group lit candles and huddled on a grassy knoll for warmth, they managed to launch their campaign by at least drawing the attention of curious passersby.

“Is this a Bible study?” asked one of a group of teen-agers.

A member of the vigil turned and explained the group’s purpose.

Another teen-ager asked, “Hey, what about the people in Florida” who survived Hurricane Andrew?

When the vigil participants explained that they care about all hungry children and people, the teen-ager said, “cool,” and pushed off with her friends.