BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News/Wire Reports
April 15, 2010
Michelle Obama kicked off her youth-focused tour of Mexico with a costume party.
The U.S. first lady on Wednesday met with hundreds of 6- to 12-year-old students in Mexico City during her first official trip abroad without her family. Dozens more children from the Escuela Siete de Enero public elementary school in the city’s Álvaro Obregón borough greeted the wife of President Barack Obama with a traditional Aztec dance and song while donning feathery and paper costumes.
“That was beautiful, everything you did, I loved the singing, I loved the dancing. I love to see you all moving and exercising,” she told the media after hugging the young performers. “Everyone here got to see the best of Mexico’s young people.”
The first lady has made it a priority during her international tour to meet with students and young people while pushing Mexican citizens and governmental officials to make education for all a top priority. Mrs. Obama also reached out to traumatized children in Haiti during an unannounced stop on Tuesday in post-earthquake Port-au-Prince.
Her stop at the top school for kids from underprivileged backgrounds underscores her steadfast message that nothing should stand in the way of the world’s youth receiving a quality and nurturing education.
“My message to the young people is that success and possibility doesn’t know a race, a background, a gender, a socioeconomic class. We are going to need the energy and the passion of every single young person. We are going to have to develop those schools and have those young people believing in their own potential,” she said in a video message distributed by the White House on Wednesday morning.
Mrs. Obama and Mexico’s first lady Margarita Zavala discussed drug addiction treatment and early prevention programs during a private meeting earlier on Wednesday.
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