Tom Hiddleston and his work with UNICEF

If you've ever doubted how extraordinarily kind hearted Tom Hiddleston is, then hopefully this article will change your mind.

If you don’t know who Tom Hiddleston is, then I expect you spent 2011 and 2012 locked away but I will tell you anyway. Tom Hiddleston is a British actor known best for his role as Loki in Marvel’s ‘Thor’ and ‘Avengers Assemble’ but was also in the BBC adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘The Hollow Crown’ and ‘War Horse’.

Recently this wonderful man flew out to Guinea, West Africa on behalf of the charity UNICEF to find out more about their work with children, education and sanitation. UNICEF works with families, communities and governments to protect the rights of all children.

Taken from UNICEF

Taken from UNICEF

On his UNICEF blog he talks of his experiences over in Guinea in great detail. He travelled from Heathrow to Nouakchott, Mauritania and finally descended into Conakry, Guinea where he was greeted by UNICEF team members and was taught about the way the country works. At the end of his first blog he writes; “It's become immediately clear that the problems in a developing country such as Guinea are enormous, but they can be simply defined as water, nutrition, sanitation, vaccination and education.”

Tom visited the National Institute of Child Health and Nutrition where he was rendered speechless by the environment he found himself in. He discovered chronic malnutrition amongst the children, many of which were disease riddled. But it wasn't all doom and gloom as he visited another of the projects; Tinafan which is a project designed to develop the social/economic inclusion of children who may have dropped out of school, and depend on their livelihood on tiny income from labour. Tom described how the children were all smiles and full of happiness.

Over the course of his trip he visited Focus Groups for women where they discussed vaccination, washing and breastfeeding and was the guest speaker on a French speaking Guinean radio show. He learnt about a project set to help children recruited into the army reintegrate into the community, rather than turning to crime. These people are taught practical skills such as; masonry, welding and plumbing. Not long after this, he visited a town that is deprived of the very basic human needs like water due to the country’s military that control the nearest well.

Soon it was Tom’s final day in Guinea, which he spent visiting a monument dedicated to the reduction of Female Genital Mutilation. He visited a school with 130 children and the children he met were so attentive and excited to learn - not only did they care about their education, they enjoyed playing a sport that Tom described to be frantic, breathless, playful and so much fun: football.

You can read all of Tom's blogs here; http://www.unicef.org.uk/UNICEFs-Work/Our-supporters/Celebrities/Tom-Hiddleston/  I will end with Mr Hiddleston’s final words on the trip; “All I can do now is help make people aware of what is happening, of what they are doing. That is all that I can do. For now.”