Yet Geraldine spent last week in the bright lights of New York as her country’s only youth journalist, filming the UN special session on children. She was sent by Plan International Kenya whose children’s video project and child rights club has taught her how to use video to highlight issues that affect children in her village and work with parents, teachers and chiefs on ways of improving conditions.

“Everything is strange.” she said. “So many cars and the noise they make, such tall buildings.”

She attended breakfast briefings with Chancellor Gordon Brown, was interviewed at press conferences, and shared concerns with peers from around the world.

She says the biggest children’s issues in Kenya are poverty, lack of education and corrupt officials.

“In my community, there is no development. It is the same today as in 1995. I would like to see street children being given places to live and free education for everyone.”

One of her biggest worries is that though HIVAids is rampant, teachers are reluctant to talk about it. “They’re trained in how to teach it but they ignore it. One of my classmates was infected while looking after her mother because she wasn’t told how to protect herself. She died three months after her mother. Schools need to take this much more seriously.”

Geraldine’s education is still in doubt. Her father, a clerk at a Catholic church, is unlikely to be able to afford both her secondary school fees and medicines for her chronically ill mother. But she will not easily be put off from pursuing her ambition to be an international campaigning journalist on children’s rights. “This is just my beginning,” she said.

Plan International: www.plan-uk.org. Enquiries: 0207 482 9777, email: mail@plan-international.org.uk