Biel Decides To Join The Climb

As Jessica Biel gears up for her new role in the theatrical "A-Team" reboot, she heads to Africa. Biel is set to join boyfriend Justin Timberlake, rapper Lupe Fiasco and actress Isabel Lucas to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the continent's highest peak, to raise awareness about the need for clean water worldwide.

Kenna gathered the group of "global influencers" reaching out earlier this year to Timberlake and Fiasco. They've also partnered with HP, who will outfit the crew with eco-friendly gear to scale the mountain. Throughout their journey, they'll be able to blog and stream photos and video.

Set for January 2010, The Summit on the Summit expedition is a passion project for producer Kenna. His father suffered from waterborne diseases as a child in Ethiopia. The climb is part of an awareness and fund-raising campaign dedicated to educating the public about the need for clean drinking water worldwide. A donation as small as one dollar can provide 1,000 liters of clean water to those in need.

"This is a basic human necessity that needs to be addressed now," Biel said in a statement, adding that she's proud to climb Kilimanjaro with the celebrity team "to help any way I can in order to raise awareness toward the life-threatening clean water crisis happening not only in Africa but around the world."

"We wanted to make sure there was a way people knew this was an issue, and a way for them to do something about it," Kenna told AP. "This is a global issue. It's not an Africa problem. It's not a South America problem. It's a world, global problem. In America, 11 million people go without clean water."

More celebrity climbers will be announced in the coming months, and he urges fans to follow the climb online.

Photo courtesy of thehollywoodgossip.com.