Classrooms? Teachers? Desks? You need all of that to educate a child, but there are other things you might not consider. Like, the availability of safe drinking water. Clean toilets. Whole families that believe in the power of school. To effect a change from the ground up, Gucci has been partnering with UNICEF in a small community in the south African nation of Mozambique. Salma Hayek Pinault, wife of Francois-Henri Pinault, head the company that owns Gucci, has been one of the forces behind the initiative. To mark ten years of their involvement with the cause, the fashion house has released a short film called Growing Tall.
It’s sobering the work involved with just getting a kid to school. That goes double for girl children, whose parents just didn’t see the point of sending their daughters to school when they could be helping out at home. A young woman, Suzanna Antonia Marcos, talks in the film about the first time she had a female teacher, in middle school. It was a revelation to her that you could be a woman and something else besides. Suzanna is a teacher today and proof of what can be accomplished when schools work like they should.
Read more about the Gucci and UNICEF initiative here.
Photograph: Salma Hayek in Lebanon for Gucci Chime for Change
