Went to Nightingale School to talk to them about the wonderful project they have taken up – Schools for Africa. This is a charity set up by Sally Keeble (the Labour MP I went to South Africa with last year), who has done lots of work on AIDS. The charity basically gets children here to fill boxes to send to Africa for children there who have nothing. It’s not clothes or shoes or money – it’s boxes for Christmas that will have things like colouring books, crayon, pencils, some toiletries and make up and some toys.

I wrote to all the schools in Haringey asking if they would like to join this project – and Nightingale stepped forward. I suspect as the years go by more will join in.

Anyway – on Monday a group of the children came up to Parliament so I showed them around and they then joined children from all over the country who are doing ‘Schools for Africa’ and heard from speakers from the World Food Organisation to Levi Roots (of Reggae, Reggae Sauce fame) telling them about the poverty and AIDS and all that is needed in Africa.

And today I went to the school assembly to tell them about the project, how it would work and who the boxes (24) will go to at Christmas. The particular cause that the Nightingale children will be supporting is AIDS orphans who are in orphanages set up by surviving women with AIDS. There are so many of these orphans – something like 650,000 who simply cannot survive and look after their siblings on their own.

Can’t think of a better way to put a smile on children’s faces – both there and here – than by this really brilliant project. Really proud of the Nightingale children!