The man’s compassion for children involved in excruciating paid labour is humbling. His international outreach is a demonstration of compassion without borders.
His latest documentary, Vipi Watoto — How are the Children?, marks the latest edition of 30 years of love with Kenya, and Kenyan children who are living in difficult circumstances.
Vipi Watoto is a cinematic voyage across Nairobi’s informal settlements, and Western Kenya counties of Homa Bay, Kisumu and Busia. The architect of this initiative was here in November 2022 to document the travails of children who work in exploitative quarries, dumpsites, mines, beaches and farms.
These children work for a pittance when they should be in the classroom. Such labour robs children of their childhood and destroys their future and self-confidence.
All the children in the documentary, Vipi Watoto, have been back in school for two years now, doing what minors should be doing: Laying a foundation for their future through formal education.
Len Morris, a decorated child rights advocate, with international acclaim, will be in Kenya again to visit children living in difficult circumstances. He regards these children as another family away from his Vineyard Haven home in Boston, Massachusetts.
The philanthropist will not be on an ego-driven tourism mission to Africa: He is coming to affirm his three decades of compassion for the child, through the Kenyan Schoolhouse. He has travelled to every corner of Kenya, visited dozens of times over the past 30 years, and reported child labour in coffee, tea, and flower farms in the Rift Valley.
Vipi Watoto adds to a rich library of films with an enviable international reach. The US journalist’s groundbreaking documentary, Stolen Childhoods set him apart as a person with deep compassion for children living in difficult circumstances.
The publication, among dozens of others, raised Morris’s international profile, while marking him out as an exemplar of love for children who are wasting away their impressionable years in exploitative paid labour. Some of these children work for food. Others work for less than a dollar a day, in sweltering equatorial heat or rain.
Interviews with children working along fish landing beaches, mines, rock quarries and farms for a token, confirm their willingness to return to school. They need release from heartbreaking toil in construction sites.
Morris understands these children’s yearning for an alternative way of life. Together with the African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect, he is giving the minors a second chance for a new beginning in an unequal world. The pan-African network that champions child rights will host the US charity worker.
Stolen Childhoods reached over 50 million viewers, through television, theatrical educational sales, radio and other mass communication platforms.
Media Voices for Children partners with Scholastic Inc to produce a magazine and website estimated to reach 22 million US public school children.
The documentaries (https://vimeo.com/918087627) have been featured on ABC News, CNN, NPR, and PBS. They have also been shown at the US State Department, Department of Labour and dozens of universities.
The International Labour Organisation also references the publications during their policy formulation. Some of the documentaries feature diverse actors in the child rights advocacy terrain. They share Len Morris’s compassion for labouring children.
During his international travels, Morris has interviewed eight Nobel Prize laureates. Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Lech Walesa of Poland, Wangari Maathai of Kenya, Willem DeKlerk of South Africa, Mairead Maguire of Ireland, Carlos Belo of East Timor, and Kailash Satyarthi of India have commended his work with children engaged in child labour.
The philanthropist has written to President William Ruto, hoping to meet him during the month he will be shooting in Kenya. He hopes to discuss the state of the children in Kenya, and Media Voices for Children’s work to send them back to school.
Morris was President Bill Clinton’s advisor on international child labour. His brief then was to report to the President if child labour was rampant in Kenya, and other countries the US trades with. He also reported if there were US imports from countries that condone child labour.
Morris also reported on countries violating the International Labour Organisation’s Resolutions. The reports on international child labour went to the President and also to the US Congress for action.