Greetings,

I am so touched by the number and responses of readers to my first letter. Thank you for following along and for caring so much.

Back in Canada, I reflect on my intense but productive trip. I had over 40 meetings, visited programs, hugged each staff, admired our new library and our two centres and ‘felt the Mosotho’ in me again after such a long hiatus. Knowing I will return for February and March 2023 made it all that much easier to leave so soon.

‘M’e Mamoletsane, Kathleen and I met with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNAIDS and UNFPA to discuss our CHANGE4ce Program to help build capacity in other organizations to provide better psychosocial support in building resilience and mental health. We are hopeful to move this initiative forward. We know that our training and experience in mental health would help so many organizations deepen the impact of their work.

I previously mentioned the new group of correctional service and national security officers in our Computer and Life Skills Program. They had heard about our program and made a proposal to their management to be allowed the time to attend the course. The first week, they were mostly speechless about the opportunity before them. Week two, their questions were meaningful with minds and hearts open. Each one will impact hundreds of wounded lives in their careers. Realizing that prisoners are not evil people but broken and struggling was a profound revelation. One said this was “like the family he never had where people get real love and care”.

One of our COVID initiatives was to mobilize our alumni to both keep them occupied with purpose and to provide support to children during the school closures. We developed and they distributed over 5,000 age-appropriate workbooks filled with COVID information, coping strategies, math and literacy activities, motivational pages and games. The alumni volunteers were trained and each supported a troop of children in their village – to listen, learn and comfort. It has been a great success. The guardians of the children have approached the alumni to learn how to better support the children under their care. Although thankfully the schools remained open for the 2022 school year, we continued the project with the volunteers supporting children after school and on weekends. COVID set so many children so far back both educationally and emotionally. The impact over the last year blew our expectations away. As you can see from the table below, a total of 108 volunteers reached 4,635 vulnerable children. On average, each of these children participated in 7 life-changing sessions.

“I have really improve on my self confidence because I can stand in front of many people and speak which was something that I wasn’t able to do before I start my outreach.” – Mafusi, volunteer

 

“Children are now seeing the light even those who are struggling they are trying.” – Chaka, volunteer

We are so proud of these young people that we are asking you for help to support a whole new cohort of volunteers. We are excited to launch a new project in which we will, with your help, recruit 100 new volunteers who will reach at least 4,300 children with tutoring and mental health check-ins. These young ones are desperate to get some help and to learn. This is the focus of our fall fundraising and we hope you will join us to make it happen. Please click here to learn more and stay tuned for additional information in the coming weeks.

Another project we are conducting is in its third year in the south of Lesotho on early and unintended pregnancy. UNFPA begged us to help in an area in which over 50% of the high school girls had fallen pregnant. That is not a typo or over exaggeration – literally more than half of the girls in high school in this region became pregnant. My heart aches for these girls and their dear babies. We are working with the chiefs, local council and community members to hold them responsible for protecting these girls. We are working with potential enablers and perpetrators, including the landlords of the tiny rented rooms rural children must live in to attend high school, taxi drivers (part of the essential transportation sector), bar owners, herd boys and teachers. We are proud to say that there has been significant progress. The taxi drivers are determined to protect their student passengers, educate new drivers, and to work with the schools to ensure students can only access taxi rides if they have a pass to leave school. Similarly, the landlords have stepped up to monitor their premises against perpetrators and ensure only those who should be in the rooms are. The main high school has reported a remarkable decline in pregnancy and has made a commitment to work with other schools to reduce truancy so that the girls are not enticed away from their education by the promises of food, jobs and ‘treats’.

Kathleen visited a school and spent a day each with the young mothers and a couple of grannies.

Going to their village, Kathleen visited a granny who had prospered under our program and who was able to grow enough food to feed her family and understand positive parenting.

The other was a different story. Our program officer had rescued two children whose mother had abandoned them. Their grandmother agreed to raise them. When Kathleen arrived, the grandmother was totally bedridden. At 84, she was giving the little food she had to the children and literally starving herself to death – so weak that she could not get out of bed. The children now care for her. This visit still haunts Kathleen. Our staff will follow up.

I had charged our psychosocial professional interns with reading Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning” and had a great chat with them on it, followed by a serious and quite wonderful discussion with all the male staff on a module on ‘Supporting Boys and Men’.

On Friday, Lesotho’s new Prime Minister was inaugurated. He paid for his own inauguration and put himself out on a real limb by making 20 promises of accountability in the first 100 days. The population is hopeful.

I write in hope that one or more readers would like to fund or to contribute to a new truck. The photo represents the one we need to purchase. As you know, we work up in the mountains on extremely rough roads (even using the term ‘road’ is a stretch!). The wear on a vehicle is enormous. We need to replace a 2012 Hilux Toyota double cab truck that has 309,000 KM. After three years of hunting and pecking, our very first truck was purchased by a corporate CEO who emphatically asked me “Well, what do you need?”. Within days the Toyota dealership in Maseru informed me that our new truck was ready to be picked up. I know this is a big ticket item, but I also have faith that someone out there can help this time around.

This partnership between you and our amazing staff has brought about more change and reached more people than we could ever have imagined – close to 260,000 people. The need is enormous but so is our capacity and our determination. We are on it!

P.S.: Our 2023 Help Lesotho Calendars are now for sale. Filled with beautiful and inspiring images, grab one before the start of the new year!

P.P.S.: We have some fun video footage from our trip that I would like to share with you. Below you can watch videos of grannies singing and dancing (taken by Kathleen) as well as our staff singing to welcome Kathleen and me to Lesotho. We’re also including a delightful compilation of resilience fun-day activities with children at our Hlotse Centre. Enjoy!

Read 2022 Letter #6 from Lesotho
Read all previous 2022 Letters from Lesotho

On October 12, 2022, waiting hours to board for our 15-hour flight from New York to Johannesburg, I had such vivid flashbacks to my reverse journey 31 months ago – leaving Hlotse in the dark hours before dawn to get through the border before it closed, to the circuitous days and countries to return home, wary of the hordes of international travelers who might be carrying this nameless plague that had so suddenly descended upon the world.

Now – returning to Lesotho, still masked and COVID wary, the world is both altered and oddly the same. The pandemic brought our staff new capacities with devices and platforms allowing more effective and meaningful distance communication – upon which we have relied all these months. Compounded by climate change effects and debilitating inflation, so much progress has been erased during these months. Gender-based violence, human trafficking, poverty, food insecurity have all risen alarmingly.

Our Board chair, Kathleen Lauder, a long-time supporter, friend and an international development specialist, is with me. Kathleen was in Lesotho twice in the very early days of the organization – no staff, no office, little structure. We reminisced about the sometimes harrowing adventures and struggles in those years building credibility, programs, partnerships and progress. It is exciting for her to see Help Lesotho now – robust, highly trained staff, incredibly well respected and impactful.

As you can imagine, I longed to see each one of our staff – to see for myself and hear know how they are. I love and admire them. After the beneficiaries, they are my daily concern. Zoom and Google Meet just aren’t the same. Our driver, dear Ntate Motsamai, greeted us warmly at the airport and, after a two-hour drive to our Hlotse Centre, the staff and children welcomed us with songs, signs and hugs. Home again!

I write after our first week – predictably crammed with 25 meetings as we try to make the most of this trip (my shortest visit in my 18 years). I will return for February and most of March for my usual time and donor trip, but these precious days are designated for our staff after such a long absence. There are still a couple spots open on the March 2023 trip. I would love to welcome you to the mountain kingdom. Please take a moment to watch this short video of the incredible people and places our guests visit (be sure to hit the ‘play’ button in the bottom left corner!).

Just since we arrived, there has been rain – finally – to drench the arid soil and prod the spring seeds and seedlings to grow after a drought of many months. As prices escalate, these homegrown vegetables are more essential than ever. At the centre, we only lost water for two days this week.

We had a great visit with our Pearl Girls and Guys4Good. These adorable grade seven children are learning how to navigate the perilous world of high school, peer pressure and adolescent confusion. They were bursting to tell us of their growth, new-found insights and how they are sharing what they learn in this program with their peers.

By-weekly, our staff congregate from various locations at the Hlotse Centre – to support each other, share their successes and challenges, and learn. This provided us with the chance to see everyone and celebrate our time together.

This year, all staff completed a challenging 12-Session Psychosocial Support Course on our online platform, followed by a Facilitator Course for those who facilitate our modules – a refresher course for some and new training for others. Our impact depends on the professionalism and insight of our facilitators. The certification requires successful completion a 7-session online course and practicum of facilitation evaluation on various topics. I was thrilled to present the program staff with their CHANGE4ce Facilitator Certification Certificates.

How they love to learn – always asking for more training. I recently finished mini-courses on suicide (Lesotho has the highest suicide rate in Africa – you can learn more here) and most recently on supporting boys and men – delving into the social-cultural issues more deeply than ever before. Following our group discussion with the male staff, they will then lead the discussion with the female staff to process the material. I love those discussions as do they, as we constantly work together to increase our effectiveness, in this case to reach one of our strategic goals to train more boys and men and hopefully, this will help.

Our staff are dedicated and care so deeply, yet each one is exposed to stories and pleas of unspeakable suffering all day long. They too face the same challenges at home. Providing useful training and support is paramount. Toward this end, I have engaged a dozen of our talented donors who have specialties to act as monthly phone/Zoom coaches for particular staff. The pairing of them has been a joy – knowing what a wonderful growth experience this will be for both. The mentees and I are thankful for donors who give so freely of their time and expertise to help our staff grow and get the attention they dearly deserve.

On this subject, one of our staff has an autistic son, another an autistic nephew. With no resources in Lesotho, I am reaching out to see if there is someone reading this letter who knows of a parent of an autistic child who might be willing to listen and support these two.  We have many deaf children at the centre and our staff have learned sign language. All of them would benefit from and appreciate learning about exceptionalities. If you can help – please reach out.

Lesotho held a national election last week and I was keen to hear the opinions on the results. We made enormous efforts to get the young people out to vote. We sent text messages to 141,000 people across Lesotho – in both English and Sesotho, distributed 3,000 handouts on why voting is so important, and reached thousands with multiple posts on social media. Of the 163K people we potentially reached, we hoped that at least 30% actually read the material – perhaps 50K. Shortly before election day, there was no electricity. Our staff were so committed to get voters out that they went out one-by-one on foot all over town encouraging people to vote. Yet, after all this work, disappointingly, Lesotho had the lowest voter turnout in the country’s recorded history at 38% – a clear indicator of how discouraged the population is with poor governance. We can only hope that those who voted did so wisely. Election monitors from many countries pronounced the election peaceful and fair. The populous has accepted the results without backlash – unlike most previous elections. The new Prime Minister, Sam Matekane, will hopefully bring the positive change this country so badly needs. He brings extensive business experience as the wealthiest person in Lesotho and seems determined to cut corruption, entitlement and restructure. We live in hope.

I met with a new class of Computer and Life Skills (CLS) participants, this time all correctional officers. Another strategic goal over the next five years is to train as many police and correctional officers as possible. We have trained many police officers and correctional guards in the past. They love it. Along with nurses and teachers, these are the frontline workers who can either help or retraumatize vulnerable girls, women and boys. Building their self-esteem and psychosocial awareness has proven to help them address their clientele with greater compassion and less judgement. I will re-visit them this week. Ironically, when I finished chatting with a youth group yesterday, there was a female police officer and former CLS graduate waiting for me. Hearing I was in town, she patiently waited for a couple of hours to tell me what a huge difference the program had made in her life. She looked to be in mid-forties and was completing her Master’s degree in social work on secondment from the police force. We had an interesting chat, while she pleaded for Help Lesotho to give this training to all the police officers and management so that they too could change.

Kathleen spent this weekend at our precious Pitseng Centre, participating in the programs, exploring the village and the stunningly beautiful valley. I was thrilled to see the new library – nearly finished, the space is well made, bright and spacious. We regaled ourselves with imaginings of the depressed youth, struggling students, correspondence students and aspiring literacy learners having this wonderful place to concentrate and hold discussion groups. Our most sincere appreciation to those who donated to this library. Please know that the impact of your generosity will last for decades and help hundreds of villagers.

Whether meeting with staff, professional interns, or program participants, the message is the same. Their compounded trauma peppers every conversation and meeting. The staggering need, intense fear and anxiety, and overwhelming gratitude are ever present. Our time together is filled with various combinations of tears, hugs, confessions, pleas for more training, stories of personal bravery and change, prayers of gratitude, and hope. I am constantly and deeply touched by the expressions of how important and meaningful our programs are and how loving and talented our staff.

The needs are tremendous but we are not helpless. We are focused and reaching people every minute. Last year, we helped 22,000 people. No dollar, day, conversation or effort is wasted.

I will write only one more letter this trip. So much to pack in! Kathleen and ‘M’e Mamoletsane and I are meeting in the coming week with three of the UN agencies who currently fund us to see if they will support some new work. Wish us luck!

I look out on the mountains as I write, feeling hopeful and appreciative. We have serious work to do and you are the ones that make this possible. I wish you could know what a difference it is making!

Until the next letter,

Best wishes

Read Peg’s next ‘Letter from Lesotho’ #142
Read the previous 2022 Letters from Lesotho

Greetings,

This is my last ‘Letter from Lesotho’ this season – imagine writing 140 letters! It would be fun to make a list of people who have read each of them! (Let me know if you have and I will make that list). I hope to return to Lesotho in the near future. I have some news to share with you at the end of the letter.

We near the particular parallelism when the weather in Lesotho and Canada is the same – as the former transitions to fall and us to spring. Basotho turn their thoughts to harvest; Canadians to planting. Climate change has altered the predictable, bringing hunger and erosion to the Lesotho mountains and flooding and fires to ours.

In my last letter, I mentioned our concern about the educational deficits exasperated by two years of COVID.

Help Lesotho is an educational organization. Everything we do is either psychosocial support or education.

It seems fitting that the funds raised to build one of our two centres, our precious Pitseng Centre, came from the 1400 teachers in the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. The buildings were constructed by local people, with a grand opening in June 2008, to wide acclaim and jubilation.

In its 14 years, the Pitseng Centre has hosted well over 100,000 visits – people who long to learn or be listened to, little ones who crave joy and protection, primary school children learning to read and comprehend the challenges they need to face, youth who devour discussion about their thoughts and feelings, community leaders who proudly master basic computer skills, and grannies who cherish the companionship of those who understand.

As well as the main building, our small centre has a wonderful new playground we installed last year, an open-air classroom (lappa), outdoor toilets (latrines) and a computer lab. I think of our grannies there – asking me, or should I say imploring me, to let them come every day so they can be in a happy place and learn something new.

I have taken some of you into the computer classes where the young people proudly show us how to create a formula in excel. You may have seen the photos of the children playing cognitive games to best other children in our centre competitions in Scrabble, Monopoly, Chess or Cribbage.

Tucked inside the centre is a small library, chock-full of African-centred books for all. When a dozen small children huddle around the two wooden tables, it is nigh impossible to pass on either side to access books or leave the room. For many little ones, this is their first exposure to books. Most of our visitors live in huts without electricity and little-to-no space to read or study.

The library plays a significant role in the community in shaping attitudes and opportunities about literacy, learning and creativity. More than 50 students flock there from school every week to grab one of those precious seats. The overflow must go to the outdoor lappa or to read under a tree despite the distraction of dozens of boisterous children on the playground equipment, playing cognitive games or other activities.

We are launching more initiatives to draw the hard-to-reach, oh-so-vulnerable out-of-school youth into the womb of the centre. Many have quit school after the discouragement of losing almost two years of their education due to COVID lockdowns or whose families can no longer afford the fees. Last year, we invested in new books for this age group in efforts to entice them away from depression, isolation and relentless household chores. Whether to play chess, join the computer classes, or participate in the many programs, these connections and constructive activities are instrumental in preventing teen pregnancies, crime, human trafficking, early and forced child marriages and substance abuse.

A wonderful organization called Bountiful Hope donated our computer lab in 2016, which has brought so much to the whole community. The first Computer and Life Skills class of 2022 just graduated, including 7/20 girls, and another one begins soon. One of the women is a nun from the nearby convent. Sister Itumeleng was passionate about the program and participated fully, not at all intimidated by her age difference with her youthful classmates.

This group particularly enjoyed the session on decision making, as they grasped the influence their thoughts and decisions have on their choices and consequences. When asked to anonymously write a current situation they face and feel inadequate to handle, the submissions revealed troubled youth desperate to find help in the program. They shared about conflicts and harsh treatment with parents, fear of men and the pressure to have sex, fear of teachers and life, worry about failing at school, feeling desperately lonely. This is often the first time they share such deep concerns. One wrote, “I just tested HIV positive and this has troubled me such that I think of taking my life or spreading it to more people because I feel betrayed by my partner”. The group unpacks the issues together, sharing thoughts, learning that HIV can be treated, peer pressure can be resisted, loneliness can be overcome. The girl who just tested positive felt that although no one in the room knew it was her, she had been supported and she could now take a bold decision to seek help.

Our Pitseng Centre professional intern, Moliehi, recently shared:

For many of these children, the centre is home – a place to be listened to, to be welcomed, to belong. Young Mothetho, comes daily and loves to share what she learns:

We have made a thoughtful decision to build a new library – a larger, quieter space to think – especially for the high school students. If they don’t have a place to study and books from which to learn, they cannot have a future.

The location will use the only remaining space we have left on the property – filling between the lappa on the left and the computer lab on the right as indicated by the white arrow (below).

I am focusing on the Pitseng Centre in this last letter because we have never had a designated funder for it. We have to raise the $130,000 required every year for its operations and programming. After ten generous years, a family foundation that gave us $10K a year has stopped. We occasionally have a gift specifically for this centre but the rest must come from our general pot. It is my hope that we can find a family, individual, corporation or foundation that would faithfully take this on annually, wholly or in part, to ensure its future. We can even name the centre in honour of them or a loved one. It is a large ask but I am putting it out there – in great faith that someone or a group will come forward. I love this centre and am determined to make sure it is a blessing to the community and its 3,000 annual visitors for years to come.

Next week we will officially launch our spring fundraising campaign to raise the funds to build the library. I know this is a project many will want to support. If you want to kickstart the project, you can make your donation here.

I realize many people wonder when I am going to retire.

As most of you know, I am an obsessive planner. To this end, I set my retirement date four years ago with a step-wise plan to build staff capacity, donor stewardship and organizational excellence. I am proud and grateful to say that, even with COVID, we are on track – with a wonderful leader, ‘M’e Mamoletsane, in Lesotho, a terrific board and outstanding staff. I will retire in the spring of 2023, a few months shy of my 74th birthday.

• The board and I have developed an emeritus role for me to define how I will remain involved. I am not going anywhere – just stepping back from active leadership.
• This month, we formally begin the search for our next executive director (ED), who will hopefully start an overlap with me in the late fall.
  I plan to spend a good part of next winter in Lesotho with ‘M’e Mamoletsane and the new ED toward a smooth transition.
• By our fiscal year-end in June 2022, we will have a new five-year strategic plan in place to leverage our experience and expertise to reach significantly more people in new, deeper and exciting ways.
• We have a full year ahead to celebrate our first 19 years, to prepare for the transition and lay the foundation for the wonderful new initiatives we have planned.
• I feel we are just getting started. My retirement is no surprise and a terrific opportunity to bring a different skill set for a different phase of the organization. We no longer need a founder. Our next ED does not have to do what I did. The foundation, trust, structures, governance, content and capacity are all in great shape and well-developed. The new ED will bring other skills, networks and capacities that I do not have and which will be needed in a new time and context.

I mention it now as we will post the position soon and I want to tell you myself. We will of course keep you informed as our plans evolve but for now, please pray with me that the new ED is longingly waiting for exactly this opportunity to serve in this very special way with and for the most amazing people one could imagine.

As a final note, many have asked me about the next donor trip to Lesotho. We are planning this for February 2023 so if you are interested let us know. Three guests from the 2019 and 2020 trips share some of their fondest memories here.

I look forward to the future. When I am relieved of my formal duties, I will have more time to chat with you, spread the word, be with my grandchildren, and make different kinds of contributions. As I write this, my mind is full – I tell everyone who will listen to me that I love our donors, that each one is a privilege to know.

Together, we will launch the second innovative phase of Help Lesotho and continue its achievements in reaching 265,000 more people. We are a team and you are key members.

I send you energy as you rebuild your resilience after such an arduous couple of years – thank you for walking this journey with me.

Love,

Peg

Click to reach Letter #4 from 2022
Click to read Letter #3 from 2022
Click to read Letter #2 from 2022
Click to read Letter #1 from 2022
Click to read past Letters from Lesotho

This is not an easy program – these wonderful young people have opened up infected wounds of abuse, neglect, fear, isolation. They have learned words to describe the intensity, anger, desperation and longing. We have 22 programs and all of our intensive programs have these graduations. For the young mothers, grannies, computer students, and herd boys, this might be the only graduation they have ever had. Chiefs and community leaders come. Each arrives with mixed feelings. They are so proud and look forward to receiving their special certificate, yet reluctant. They definitely do not want to leave their program. It has been a womb – safe, loving, healing and growing. (One of them stood up at the graduation and said: “I felt loved”). They will remember this time for the rest of their lives, knowing they were brave enough to face their demons and embrace behaviour change and healthy decision making.

I have a shameless pride and admiration for them. I know in the depths of my heart the risk they have taken to be known, and they never flinch. I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I missed the chance to tell them that and to tell them we expect them to go forward to share what they have learned with others and to make a real difference in their families and communities – not just now, but for the rest of their lives.

(Top Left) Herd Boy Graduation, (top right) Grandmother Graduation, (bottom left) Young Mother Graduation, (bottom right) LIT graduation.

As I was writing this, I saw an unsolicited post on LinkedIn from one of our interns, Katiso Motopi:

“One year ago today I graduated from the Leaders in Training (LIT) program at Help Lesotho. I wish everyone could go through this. It changes the whole way of seeing life. It was very entertaining and educational. I got a chance to reflect on my fears and challenges, shared my experiences and knowledge. I cried for the first time in 14 years, laughed and felt the healing through the powerful sessions. Since that day, I still strive to be a better person both professionally and personally, a better father, a better colleague, a better listener, a better psychosocial support provider and most importantly an agent of change. After my graduation, I was blessed to join the Professional Intern Program here as a Professional Psychosocial Support (PSS) Intern. This is the platform that I am still part of which is helping me to improve in my PSS provision and facilitation skills (to be continued).

I have used a fair bit of my COVID-non-travelling time to improve our staff training in these areas. We need outstanding materials and training to maintain our expertise in this area. Other organizations come to us for this specialization because it is so hard to develop this kind of capacity. We developed the CHANGE4ce Program to leverage our experience, proven materials and staff talents to operationalize our strategic goal to train more organizations to deliver deeper, more meaningful psychosocial support (PSS). The need only increases. Our online learning platform now offers a fulsome 12-session Psychosocial Support Training Course (required for all our staff) and a 7-session Facilitator Certification Course with an extensive practicum (required for all our program staff). Each is multi-media with videos, readings, assessments, exercises, discussion groups and practical tools and assignments. Going down into the heart of human misery is difficult and requires knowledge, perspective, self-care and tender talent.

I share this as it is the thread that weaves itself throughout all of our work, approaches and relationships – whether staff, partner or beneficiary. This is the foundation on which we stand and from there people can learn, develop critical thinking and move on with their lives with confidence, autonomy and social responsibility. That is what brings about real social change – when enough people have the confidence and personal capacity to demand equality, justice and democracy.

To give you an idea of the impact, I include some quick quotes from the course graduates:

• “I struggled when interacting with beneficiaries but now I am more confident in handling their painful experiences and circumstances.”
• “It really helped me to grow personally as a father, husband and professional to be a better PSS provider.”
• “It helped me to heal emotionally. Now I feel I have a big room full of emotional support tools for myself and others as I apply what I have learnt. It helped me improve my relationships with other staff and to feel confident that I have necessary skills to support others.”
• “PSS is so complex. We need to master the skill of listening carefully, have a kind heart, empathy and respect for others. Beneficiaries receiving the right kind of PSS at the right time helps them to be resilient towards challenges they are faced with – to be assertive and become survivors.”

If we could train existing organizations, front-line service providers, such as police, development and health workers, and teachers to deliver their programs with greater compassion and comprehension of the underlying issues, maybe the pregnant girls would go to the health clinics, the community members would report sexual and domestic abuse, the children and women would feel safer, and youth would get more support. Hopefully, we will find funding to be able to provide this training for free to organizations that cannot afford it or have not yet valued such in-depth training for their staff. Wish us luck.

Those of you who follow our individual programs will know that this approach is central and has affected the lives of everyone who has come in contact with our Help Lesotho programs, staff and donors, such as these two young girls:

15-year-old Pontso, a Pearl Program graduate, is an exemplar of the continued high rates of child-headed families. Many drop out of school to collect tins and metal to provide for their siblings who are also in school. Child-headed households perpetuate teenage pregnancy and face much discrimination. She has looked after her four siblings (the youngest is 18 months) since both her parents left to work in South Africa. Pontso starts at dawn to cook, do the laundry, and get herself and the other children ready for school. She was often late for the training sessions, yet her presence lit up the room as she actively engaged in discussions and activities. She used the little transportation money we gave her to buy essentials for her and her siblings and walked the distance home. Despite all this, she graduated from primary school in December 2021 with flying colours and is now in high school, through our child sponsorship program.

As I close, I want to respond to a few questions from readers about COVID-19 in Lesotho. I reached out to Tebello Sarele (read more about her here), one of our alumni who is a practicing pharmacist, to share some of the issues from her perspective. Tebello describes the misuse of drugs and traditional medicines to prevent or fight the infection, such as antibiotics, which absorb people’s precious funds and can cause liver and kidney damage. People have defaulted on getting their AIDS medication or drugs for chronic diseases (heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc) for fear of getting infected at the clinics. These conditions are now out of control. She highlights the myths and inadequate supervision for adverse reactions to COVID vaccines as a significant driver to vaccine hesitancy. She writes:

Each one of us – on staff, in the programs, on the board and in the families of those around us, thank you that you never give up either. The situation globally is truly depressing, but we are not helpless. We can be the steady help that changes lives and improves social justice. You are the ones who help us do it. Thank you!

Peg

P.S. Another good use of my time is catching up with you. If you would like to chat on the phone or go for a walk in Ottawa, send me an email. I would love that!

Click to read Letter #5 from 2022

Click to read Letter #1 from 2022
Click to read Letter #2 from 2022
Click to read Letter #3 from 2022

Click to read past Letters from Lesotho

Greetings,

I know you are as excited as I am at the advent of spring – it has not come too soon! I imagine you are planning gatherings and trips, hopeful to satisfy some of those longings. I am booked and looking forward to a hiking trip for a week in the Rockies in the first week of April – it has been so long …. I can’t wait!

I have so much to share in this letter that I will get right to it. Note that I am including two videos of our beneficiaries that are well-worth a few minutes of your time (about 11 minutes total running time).

Firstly, our staff have done a terrific Annual Report for 2021 (fiscal year ends June 30). It is quick, visual impact reporting on our work during a very challenging year. The financial charts on this page tell you exactly where your money has gone – https://helplesotho.org/financials/.

As you know, we have a vibrant program for pregnant girls and young mothers. One incredibly generous woman in Canada sponsors a major portion of the program and UNICEF another section so we can reach more girls. The program is holistic, dealing with pre- and post-natal issues, breastfeeding and nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, emotional challenges, conflict resolution, and managing the stigma of having babies so young. The girls also learn to start a small business in their villages. Over the years, the program’s reputation has grown so that UNICEF regularly uses it as an example in other countries and sponsored the production of this video which introduces you to these dear young woman as they speak for themselves.

The world just celebrated International Women’s Day. It is exciting to see the changes and concurrently disappointing to see the lack of progress. Our staff and beneficiaries honoured the day by striking the ‘Break the Bias’ pose!

As Help Lesotho evolves, we move fervently to scale up our program strategies to educate community leaders and members on their explicit responsibility to create the social change required for girls and women to be safe and part of decision making in all facets of life. Since 2016, our GIRL4ce Program has delivered the message through drama, song and poetry. Our community dialogues train herd boys to educate and communicate with their local councilors on their rights and the rights of girls and women. All beneficiaries are trained to speak up to the elders, mothers-in-law, teachers, parents, guardians and local leaders on their rights. The impact is significant and in the end, the community leaders are appreciative:

This scale-up includes increasing our programing for boys and men, for their own benefit, and as they are the usual perpetrators and conveyers of inequity. We have augmented the number of male participants from 20% to 35% over the past few years, despite our experience that donors are often reluctant to fund male programs. We have boys and men in various programs (Guys4Good for grade seven boys, the leadership programs and camps, sponsored children, Computer and Life Skills, GIRL4ce, for example). Funded almost entirely by another generous woman, the impact and reputation of our Herd Boy Program is significant. Some of these boys are as young as six when they start herding. One of the Chiefs in Berea, Ntate Mangana, said:

You definitely will want to watch this short video of these boys so far away and trying so hard to be good men. 

We piloted a program to combine the herd boys with the out-of-school boys in the same village. In many ways, both groups are idle, prone to depression and substance abuse with limited prospects for their futures, and are often the abusers of the girls around them. Alas, bringing the two groups together did not work. Each group has unique challenges, different education levels, and deeply ingrained biases towards the other. The groupings had such different attitudes and contexts that they could not communicate or support each other. We now run programs for each group so they get the support they need to safely explore their challenges, emotions, and hopes for the future.

As the mother of three sons and grandmother of four young lads, these fragile boys break my heart. They are so wounded, but they actually thrive when given the support, attention, empathy and time to heal from their insecurities and lack of knowledge. When they explore how these negative, abusive sub-cultures sabotage their relationships with their families and girls they long to partner with, they start opening up to growth and eagerly grasp at new ideas to become young men they can respect. One staff wrote: “The boys say they are no longer forcing their girls into sexual activities but are choosing to communicate and discuss consent because they want better relationships”. From our multitude of reports here is a sample from our staff, as the boys can now:

• recognize peer pressure situations and have the skills necessary to resist it;
• identify people they want to become friends with by sharing their values;
• think for themselves rather than allowing others to make decisions for them;
• identify their own self-esteem levels and strategies to boost their confidence and self-esteem;
• understand the importance of self-talk, and that saying good words to themselves when they do not feel strong will help them to accept who they are and value themselves when others do not;
• accept that dropping out of school was not a healthy decision and if given a chance to go back to school they would go;
• understand the laws and acts protecting human rights in Lesotho, including that children actually have rights and should be protected against gender-based violence, being exploited, forced into marriage and denied an opportunity to go to school; and
• realize that abduction and human trafficking are serious offenses, even abducting girls to be married, and that if they witness these things, they could also be found guilty.

Many of these boys do not know their HIV status as they are afraid to go to the clinics. We bring the health care providers to them, for testing and education about transmittable diseases, condoms, female reproduction etc.

Doing this math, if we helped close to 22,000 people last year, we reached over 7,700 boys and men. Multiply that by the number of years and we are reaching an enormous number of males with deep enough programing to create substantial social change.

And finally, I want to share this happy story. When COVID forced lockdowns, we were deeply concerned about the education and mental health of the children. Most have no real support, no books at home, often no table to study, light to read or educated parent to help. We were also concerned about our program alumni becoming depressed with all they have to cope with. We married the two concerns and called it ‘Limitless Horizons Volunteer Village Outreach’. Next week marks exactly one year since the project began.

In 2021 we had 96 alumni who volunteered 5,379 hours (av. 56 hours per volunteer) and reached 4,736 children (av. 49 children per volunteer). In 2022, just over half of the original volunteers continue their outreach activities and we are welcoming 30 new volunteers to the project this month. The alumni receive training in tutoring and basic listening skills to then work with children in their village to keep them motivated to learn and to provide basic psychosocial support. We have developed and distributed over 5,000 activity books, filled with COVID-19 education, math, literacy and science games and activities, motivational messages and coping strategies.

The project has been so successful that the guardians and parents have asked us to teach them how to better support the children in their education! Perhaps most rewarding is witnessing the pride the youth volunteers have in seeing their commitment to role modeling and helping others yield substantial impact. They are earning the respect of others in the community. They finally believe that they have what it takes to make a difference.

To learn more about the educational context in Lesotho right now you can check this out: https://reliefweb.int/report/lesotho/striving-build-better-future-children-through-education-lesotho

I sometimes struggle with what to include in these letters as there is so much to share, context to provide, people to thank and others to celebrate. In the course of a given series, I try to cover key areas but do let me know if you want special topics in either of the last two letters this season.

Be well my friends, embrace the day, know that you are appreciated.

If you will accept it, I send you a hug.

Peg

P.S. For those who are interested, this digital government of Lesotho flip brochure has lots of photos and information on various sectors. The font is small but you can enlarge any given page: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/a6669c2361.html

Click to read Letter #1 from 2022
Click to read Letter #2 from 2022
Click to read past Letters from Lesotho