An FGM campaigner has inspired pupils to set up their own awareness group after she told them she is still haunted by the women who cut her.

Addressing pupils this week at Leytonstone's Buxton School, ahead of International Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM Day on Saturday (February 6), Hibo Wardere told pupils she still has nightmares about her trauma as a six-year-old girl in Somalia.

She says she wakes up in the middle of the night in a blind panic after dreaming the elderly women who carried out the horrific genital mutilation procedure is chasing her.

Mother Hibo, 46, who moved to the UK from Somalia 27 years ago, now travels to schools across London speaking to pupils.

She said: "I still wake up in the middle of the night screaming and crying.

"It is 40 years later and I am a grown woman but in the dream I'm a little girl back in Somalia.

"The women was very old and couldn't see very well.

"She had a cataract but all I can remember are her eyes, they were very white.

"It is those eyes that haunt me."

Pupils at Buxton School, in Terling Close, have been inspired to start an FGM awareness group after the assemblies with Hibo.

Marco Antonio, who started the group, said: "What I found most difficult to understand is the role men play.

"Mostly they are protected from it.

"They aren't involved.

"But if the men spoke up on behalf of their sisters and daughters and nieces then that would go a long way to making a difference."

He added: "That is why we have started this group.

"It isn't a girl problem or boy problem, it is a human problem."

After the talk, Hibo added: "I am very proud of these pupils.

"I speak at universities and to adults but it is at primary and secondary schools that I feel I am making the most difference.

"These young people have the power to shape future generations.

"If we can educate them about the horror of FGM then they have the power to stamp it out for good."

Buxton community leader Carol Moloney said the talks had an impact on the pupils.

She said: "The very notion that FGM exists leaves some of our students shocked and motivates them to speak out against this practice."