SHOPPERS were given the chance to sample food usually handed out to starving Third World refugees.

The event, in Durham Market Place, was set up by Save the Children to highlight its Beat Poverty Day campaign.

Energy bars, similiar to those given out at refugee camps, were sold to shoppers for the sterling equivalent of an American dollar.

Sheila Wright, the charity's North-East manager, said: "A dollar a day is the measure of absolute poverty by the United Nations. More than 600 million children have to live on a dollar a day or less and it doesn't have to be this way."

Save the Children was working with students from the Durham University Charities Kommittee (Duck), which recently raised £12,000.

The money was presented to Save the Children at the weekend event, the largest single donation Duck has ever made.

It was raised through a sponsored climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, last summer.

Duck Manager Tim Guinan said: "Climbing the mountain was one of the hardest physical and psychological challenges most of us had ever faced, yet also the most rewarding."