It is about a year since the photo of a Danish aid worker giving water to an emaciated Nigerian toddler went viral.
The child was visibly weak, his limbs little more than flesh and bone. But a year later the same child has recovered and will be attending school.
The boy, who was abandoned by his parents in Nigeria after being accused of being a witch, was rescued by Anja Ringgren Loven suffering from severe malnutrition.
“We’ve seen both frightened, tortured and even dead children,” Loven, co-founder of the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation, described in a 2016 blog post. That’s when she first met the little boy she now calls Hope.
“I chose to call him Hope, because right now, we’re all hoping that he survives,” Lovén wrote two days after she rescued the boy. “[He was] in a village, naked, alone and almost dead.”
Loven shared a photo of herself giving water to Hope that went viral, spreading his story around the world.
Now, more than a year after the famous photo was taken, the 3-year-old boy is unrecognizable.
“Today it’s exactly one year ago the world came to know a young little boy called Hope,” Loven wrote in a Facebook post on Jan. 30. “This week Hope will start school.”
In the updated photo, a healthier looking Hope was wearing a red jumper, white sneakers and a black backpack, taking a sip of water from a bottle – just like he did in the original.
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