Students from Witney leave for a very challenging school trip in July when they go to Africa to collect accounts of one of the darkest acts of genocide in recent times.

From left, students Matthew Wheeler, Rhian Dare-Edwards, Esther Fisher, Andrew Lloyd, Carly Scott and Jennifer Weston will gather information to be used in schools at next year's Holocaust Memorial Day

On July 13, the six students at Henry Box School, accompanied by four teachers, leave for a four-week stay in Rwanda, where in 1994 one million people were killed over a 100-day period.

The project, called Voices From Rwanda, will see the sixth formers talk to orphans and victims, as well as helping aid agencies rebuild damaged homes.

The testimonies they bring home will be passed on to the Department for Education and Skills for 2004's Holocaust Memorial Day in British schools, themed on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

Headteacher Rod Walker said: "This is the most adventurous extra-curricular activity ever undertaken by our school."

Witney's MP, David Cameron, made Parliament aware of the trip in a debate on school funding.

He said: "I give my full support to this innovative and exciting project."

The 17-year-old students will be accompanied by history teacher Martyn Beer and his wife Jill, Swahili-speaking language teacher Graeme Riddell, and youth worker and health visitor Linda Baines.

One of the students, Matthew Wheeler, said: "We're hoping to gain some understanding and be able to show that students in the West have not forgotten Rwanda."

They will be based in the north of the country and setting up a link with a secondary school, where some of the pupils are as old as 30 because their lives were disrupted by the genocide.