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Charlize cries at Aids clinic

Oscar winner Charlize Theron fought back tears during a trip home when she saw the mobile Aids testing and counselling clinic her cash had created.

Oscar winner Charlize Theron fought back tears during a trip home when she saw the mobile Aids testing and counselling clinic her cash had created.

Theron teamed up with Oprah Winfrey's Angel Network to create a much-needed new health and educational resource in Kwazulu-Natal.

The actress returned home to shoot a short film about the mobile unit, which travels between remote high schools and services more than 3000 pupils who have lost family and loved ones to Aids.

In the film, which aired on Winfrey's show in the US yesterday, Theron is seen chatting to kids, handing over gift bags and helping them with Aids tests. But it was an encounter with a young girl who recently lost both parents that upset her.

"To see kids able to talk that way with each other, with an adult, with a counsellor; that never happened when I grew up in this country.

"It's hard because part of me feels incredibly blessed in my life and then you come here and you see people struggling. And then you see this beautiful thing that is the spirit of these people and how resilient they are and that's the miracle."

Theron offered pupils advice about condom use and told them how she learnt to become a better person by her own late father's mistakes. She held back tears when one girl said she had "awakened" her dreams of becoming a businesswoman.

She said the trip made her understand her own fortune: "Those kids have a 50percent chance of contracting HIV and Aids and dying from it, and that could have been my life." - Wenn

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