Ikuko Kawai and Aki Mukai perform at Mother Hand Concert
 June 21, 2008, Tokyo – The Ikuko Kawai Mother Hand Fund and MUKWANO, a charity NGO for Ugandan children, held a special event at the Casals Hall in Tokyo on June 21 at what was billed the Mother Hand Concert, A concert for the children of Africa. With backing from the World Bank and the Japanese Foreign Ministry, the concert is the first charity performance conceived to increase assistance and to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS orphans in Uganda.
The concert brought together Ikuko Kawai, violinist, and Febian Reza Pane on piano, actress Aki Mukai, and chair of MUKWANO Japan Yuka Nagatani. During the first half of the event, Kawai and Mukai recited poems and prose written by children in Uganda who are living with HIV/AIDS. In the Casals lobby, photographs depicting the everyday struggles of existence for orphaned children in Uganda were on display, and mobile telephone straps hand-designed by the same children were sold to the public.
NGO MUKWANO assists orphans in the Rakai region of Uganda by building and running schools. At a concert last December for HIV/AIDS awareness, held at the United Nations University, sponsored by the Red Shoes Foundation and World Bank, MUKWANO’s director Fumiko Aono delivered a message for Yuka Nagatani in front of the audience.
At the concert event, a personal message was given by Joy Phumaphi, Vice President of the Human Development Network at the World Bank, and was also printed in the event program as it appears below:
On behalf of the World Bank Group, I would like to thank the organizers of the
"Mother Hand Concert,” particularly the Ikuko Kawai Mother Hand Fund, NGO MUKWANO, and the other organizers for raising Japanese awareness and support
for AIDS orphans in Uganda, and elsewhere in Africa. Significantly improving
Africa's human and economic development is the top priority for the World Bank
Group and all development partners in order to reach the 2015 Millennium
Development Goals.
Under Japan's leadership, more than 40 heads of African countries gathered
recently in Tokyo for TICAD IV (The Tokyo International Conference for African Development) to discuss pressing development issues in Africa including HIV/AIDS
and other critical health challenges. In its traditionally generous way, the Government
of Japan pledged substantial additional assistance to fight poverty in Africa. Your
support is essential to achieve these goals, and I am greatly encouraged that so
many of you are attending this concert to show your support for the challenges and opportunities which the AIDS orphans of Africa live with every day. I want to
sincerely thank the Japanese people for their generosity and humanity in helping the world's poorest people in Africa and beyond. Together, we can all make a difference.
Joy Phumaphi, Vice President for Human Development, The World Bank Group
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