How Smart Kids is Changing Learning in Rural Lesotho
On a warm, sunny afternoon in the rural community of Nokong, the sounds of laughter, rhyming songs, and friendly competition float across the hills. A single red-earth dirt road winds through the surrounding villages, where horses and sheep outnumber people and the local primary school welcomes children who walk miles each day to attend.
On the school grounds, three young women – proudly wearing their royal blue Help Lesotho volunteer polo shirts – are leading games and learning activities for more than 100 children, ranging in age from one to thirteen. Their energy is contagious. Children clap, sing, race, and shout encouragement to one another as learning unfolds through play.
These young women are not outsiders. Each of them participated in Help Lesotho’s Youth Mother Program in recent years. Today, they have returned as leaders. One balances her young daughter on her back while laughing and singing with the older children – a powerful image of resilience, care, and possibility.
When the opportunity arose to volunteer with Help Lesotho’s Smart Kids Initiative, all three jumped at the chance. In their communities, they regularly run tutoring and psychosocial support sessions on their own. But on this day, they came together to host a large group activity at the primary school, creating a joyful space where children could learn, feel supported, and simply be kids.
Young People Leading Change
The Smart Kids Initiative is built on a simple but powerful idea: young people already have what it takes to create positive change in their communities. Through the program, youth volunteers discover that their time, creativity, and compassion can make a real difference. They become role models – showing children what confidence, kindness, and perseverance look like in action.
By offering encouragement and patient support, Smart Kids volunteers help children build confidence as they face everyday challenges: writing their name for the first time, learning to count, sounding out words, or reading aloud. These moments – small as they may seem – lay the foundation for lifelong learning.
Making Learning Fun
In Lesotho, teachers, parents, and guardians often focus on the formal elements of education. Primary school is free and compulsory, yet in many rural communities, quality and learning outcomes remain weak. Children rarely receive the individualized encouragement that builds confidence and a genuine love of learning.
The Smart Kids Initiative is not about test scores or essays. It is about opening children’s minds and nurturing their natural curiosity. It teaches children that mistakes are part of learning – not something to be punished. Through play, storytelling, and positive reinforcement, children begin to associate learning with joy rather than fear.
Most importantly, Smart Kids helps children develop internal motivation and resilience – the confidence to try, to fail, and to try again.
On that sunny afternoon in Nokong, amid laughter and song, something powerful was happening: young women who once received support were now passing it on. In doing so, they are helping raise a generation of children who believe in themselves – and in their ability to shape a brighter future.
