“David Beckham met with children in Sierra Leone on Saturday as part of his role as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, the U.N. child agency.

The LA Galaxy midfielder arrived in West Africa late on Friday on a two day trip to a country struggling to recover from a 1991-2002 civil war.

Infant and maternal mortality are among the highest in the world in the former British colony, where roads, schools and hospitals were devastated by a conflict notorious for images of drugged child soldiers raping and killing civilians. “He’s here as a guest of UNICEF,” the charity’s spokeswoman Alison Parker told Reuters by telephone. “He’s covering programmes on child survival in Sierra Leone; visiting a number of UNICEF programmes in the northern part of the country on malaria prevention and immunisation.”

What a fantastic human being he is!

Blatantly stolen from the David Beckham Zone because I couldn’t be arsed to paraphrase. *g*