Paris, December 2009 – Seven poor African children fly to Paris on dream-of-a-lifetime trip to be crowned ‘Young Ambassadors of the Great Apes’

 “It’s the gorillas I’ve got to thank for bringing me here,” said Sephora Binet-Mboti, (13), as she gazed up, wide-eyed, at the EiffelTower in Paris. She was a long way from her in home in Central Africa where she lives in Gabon at subsistence level in a clapboard house with her parents and nine brothers and sisters.

Sephora had never travelled as far as the capital of Gabon, let alone to the developed world, but on Thursday (3rd December) she boarded a plane for an all-expenses-paid dream week in Paris, the city of lights. 

She was one of two children from Gabon and five from Uganda who were jetted to France by UNESCO and the French Environment Ministry (MEEDDM) to be crowned ‘Young Ambassadors of the Great Apes’ as a culminating event for the UN Year of the Gorilla (YoG).