The global launch of the Lesson for Life in Kenya

Hundreds of children from Gatoto Community School in Nairobi, Kenya, gathered with their parents to take part in the Lesson for Life today to launch the Lesson globally. The children were just some of the 140,000 taking part across the whole of the country.

At the school the children were joined by with representatives from the Ministry of Education and local authorities, along with representatives from each of the ten agencies that initiated the Lesson for Life including the Chief Executive Officers of Plan and World Vision.

Betty, the headmistress of Gatoto Community School said ‘It’s an honour that the global launch of the Lesson for Life is happening in the very heart of Mukuru slums… where it will address the issues that are central to children’s growth and development.’

Gatoto School has grown from strength to strength since its inception in a church, without a permanent base in this extremely poor area of Nairobi in 1994. Over the years the school has grown from the bottom of the school league to among the top ten in the division, and it now owns the land that its four classrooms stand on. It is a school that is entirely run and developed by the community itself and this is what Betty attributes to its success.

Betty also said that ‘AIDS affects us in totality, and so it is better that our intervention is in total as well’. She also asked for Anti-Retro Viral medicine to be brought closer to the people that need them.

Dean Hirsch, chair of the group of organisations working globally on the Lesson for Life, said ‘If we are going to stop HIV it is because the children will lead us…If we want a better world then parents, presidents, ourselves, teachers, everyone must listen to children. If we are to stop HIV, children must be our teachers and leaders’.

The children involved sang songs, played games and performed theatre for the assembled crowd. The star of the Lesson was a child who rapped for the group, working the crowd and gaining a rapturous applause at the end; among his messages were ‘AIDS is for real’.

An exhibition of photos, all taken by children affected by HIV and AIDS was shown in the school hall. Among the photos taken was one by Judy Wangui from Kenya who says ‘I am an orphan but my grandmother takes care of me. I know I will finish school one day and be a lawyer.’

Mr Moses Maiena, in his closing remarks representing the Vice-President of Kenya, said ‘Every child counts, and every child has rights irrespective of where she or he is born.’