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There are so many ways to get involved. Help Lesotho provides tax receipts, photos and interesting reports on donor supported projects and activities. Examples of ways to become involved are described below but you may have your own ideas. To Get Involved contact the email address under the appropriate tab below or visit the Champions page.
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Involve your company, foundation or association
Companies may become involved through cash to support orphans or a project or ‘in-kind’ gifts (resources or other non-cash donations) such as of printing, signage, supplies, event hosting, etc. for Help Lesotho. Your employees can make a real difference to orphans, vulnerable children, schools and youth. For ideas and questions contact info@helplesotho.ca.
Examples:
Keller Williams Realty Ottawa provides free office space and partnership
Keller Williams Ottawa Realty http://www.kwottawa.ca donates free office space to HL and involves its charity committee and employees to help orphans in Lesotho. HL’s appreciation is expressed in various ways in presentations, announcements, printed materials, etc. reaching across both Canada and other countries.
Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) builds a Youth Centre
OECTA has taken on a two year fundraising campaign to fund the construction of a Youth Centre in the small village of Pitseng to provide space for leadership training, out-of-school youth development, pre-employment training, after school peer tutoring for orphans and vulnerable children, teacher training and grandmother support programs.
Matching Funds (private donor + a foundation) build HL office and accommodation in Lesotho
HL has struggled for 3.5 years with rapid growth and inadequate space to work or local living quarters for interns, volunteers and Canadian staff. This has been time consuming and constantly pressing issue. One private donor approached a foundation to suggest matching funds to help. Although they have both requested anonymity, our sincere thanks are extended regularly with reports, photos and appreciation.
Totemic/PayPlan buys a truck and sponsors orphans
PayPlan (http://www.payplan.com), based in UK, donated funds for a desperately needed four-wheel drive double cab truck for HL in Lesotho and involves its employees in sponsoring children. PayPlan has provided a laptop, accounting software, a printer and funding for part-time youth leader stipends with HL.
positively AFRICA builds a hostel for 50 girls at Bokoro High School
positively AFRICA (www.positivelyafrica.org) has built a hostel for 50 girls who live too far away to attend school unless they can be boarded at this remote school in northern Lesotho. With funds raised by Rick Bower and Aleda Boyes through positively Africa, this hostel will make an enormous difference to hundreds of students over the years. Completed in June 2008, the student body of Bokoro and Help Lesotho thank positively Africa for its support.
InMedia helps tell the story of Help Lesotho
InMedia (http://www.inmedia.com) an Ottawa public relations company donates its considerable talents and valuable staff time to help spread the word about Help Lesotho in various publications across North America. They have been responsible for getting articles in many papers, both neighbourhood and national. Francis Moran, its CEO lived in Lesotho in his youth. He is giving back!
Kenoli Foundation provides funds for 2008 HL Annual Leadership Camp and school HIV/AIDS work
The Kenoli Foundation has supported the 2008 HL Leadership camp for 200 orphans, vulnerable children and teachers for six days to learn about HIV/AIDS, leadership, decision making, gender equity, sexual health, communication, dealing with grief and loss, etc. Funds also support the HIV/AIDS Clubs education in HL twinned schools.
Involve your school
There are many ways to involve schools and students to make a real connection with a project or school in the mountains of Lesotho which desperately need help. The following provides ideas, a School Guide with details on how to become involved, a Q&A sheet for questions children might ask and examples of what schools have already done. Schools helping schools is a concrete way to involve your students is sharing, caring and learning about others who live very different lives. In the schools HL supports in Lesotho, there are between 25% and 60% of the student population orphaned. They need our help. HL provides reports and other feedback to engage students. This website has many stories and speeches written by Basotho children and reports, news and links they can use to do school project. Contact directorprograms@helplesotho.ca.
How to involve your school
The Help Lesotho School Guide includes details on Schools Helping Schools Program and the different ways schools can get involved in supporting Basotho schools and a Q & A for teachers and students. On the site you will also find some Sesotho for your students to learn.
Hold a One-Time Fundraiser to Sponsor a Project
Fund a short-term project to provide clothing or shoes for needy children, seeds for a school garden or supporting teachers training. These projects are chosen by the schools. Basotho schools are required to submit cost estimates, seek approval, submit receipts for all expenditures and write final reports for the donor school. HL sends the school an additional report and photos of the finished project.
Examples:
Kars Public School raised funds for a water tank at Paray Primary School
This water tank provides a means for Paray Primary to collect water for water for drinking, school gardens and school animals.
St Thomas Aquinas Secondary School holds an annual coin drive
Each year their proceeds support for the Orphan Relief Fund which provides clothing, food and medical supplies for orphaned and vulnerable children.
Joining Hands: taking on one project
Schools may choose to Join Hands with other donor schools to fund larger and essential projects. For example, it takes significant funds to repair a classroom roof about to cave in (children must leave school on days of high winds), to build outhouses for schools who have none, fix holes in walls, build classrooms (60 - 120 children/class). These are longer term projects that could span the school year.
Examples:
Corpus Christi Grade Six Students Supply Water to Katlehong School
Corpus Christi Catholic Elementary School in Ottawa is twinned with Katlehong Primary School in the remote mountain village of Thaba Tseka. Although Katlehong receives ongoing support from their twin, the grade six classes at Corpus Christi were particularly moved when they heard that the water might be cut off at the sole pump that served about 800 children at Katlehong, because the school had been unable to pay its water bill. This meant that the seeds that had recently been provided courtesy of their twin would likely wither in the ground. To alleviate the demands for water in the school, the Corpus Christi Grade 6 classes engaged in a special fund-raising activity to generate the money to provide water tanks and roof gutters on the classroom buildings closest to the gardens, and thus collect rain water that was just washing away. Within a few weeks the money was raised by bake sales and informal canvassing. The children even wrote a special song and had it recorded. How timely it was, as the water was cut off just as we were able to install the tanks that became the only supply for all the school needs.
Rockcliffe Park School Puts a Roof over Mokoena Primary
Rockcliffe Park Public School was HL’s first twinned school and has supported more than one needy school in Lesotho. Its current partner is Mokoena Primary, a very desperate accumulation of stone and mud buildings set at the foot of a cliff in rural Butha Buthe. Each classroom is a separate hut, mostly with thatched roofs that were parched by years of drought and then turned to mush by more recent deluges. One classroom is a former chicken coop. Rockcliffe Park’s active fund-raising not only provided hundreds of shoes and uniforms to the near-naked children, but was able to provide the materials to replace the worst of the damaged thatch, thereby enabling the children to continue to use the buildings during the bitter winter.
St. Thomas Aquinas Graduates Have Classmates at Khethisa High
St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the biggest fundraisers on behalf of a partner. Khethisa High School in Pitseng has benefitted from both infrastructure enhancement and basic services such as uniforms and books. But a very meaningful program they undertake each year is their “Grads Helping Grads” initiative, wherein the graduating class at St. Thomas raises funds specifically to keep in school two students at Khethisa who otherwise would have to drop out because of their inability to pay their final year, perhaps due to the death of their last surviving parent or the loss of the little income the family might have had. How poignant to see the smiling photos of the Khethisa graduates lined up beside the graduating class at St. Thomas! It is as if they are part of the Canadian graduating class.
Deep Cove Elementary Pumps it up for Motati Primary
Deep Cove School in BC is an enthusiastic supporter of its twin students at Motati Primary outside of Leribe. They felt as devastated as the children at Motati who returned to school to find that someone had been so desperate as to steal the entire pump mechanism from the only water supply at the school - probably to sell it for scrap in order to feed themselves or their families. The loss of the water supply meant that children now had to carry potable water 100 metres down from the village above the school and water for their garden plot 100 metres up from a rocky steam below Motati. Deep Cove quickly raised the funds to replace the pump mechanism. The school community became so enervated by the gift that the poverty-stricken families came together to carry sand from the stream and blocks from a fallen-down building to construct a security hut over the new installation. From Deep Cove’s gift there flowed both water and community engagement.
John McCrae School in Guelph - Footwork for Feet
John McCrae School in Guelph ON raises a substantial amount each year for its impoverished twin school in Thaba Tseka, Paray Primary, where over 50% of the children are orphans who walk to school virtually barefoot, even through the chilling winter snows. John McCrae’s main annual fundraiser is a dance-a-thon, in which the children stomp their feet in order to cover those of their needy twins. Last year almost 150 pairs of new shoes were provided at Paray. Hope achieved one small step at a time.
Turnbull School Equips Sefapanong Primary for the Future
Sefapanong Primary is an isolated school in a remote rural area in the central highlands of Lesotho. About one third of the children in grades 1 to 7 are orphans. In past years Turnbull School raised money to construct a building that could be used as a community hall as well as extra classroom space. The Lesotho school had difficulty because they had no furniture, and there was some echo that resonated from the stone walls. Turnbull focused on providing additional help to Sefapanong by raising money for tables, chairs and sound-absorbing fabric that enabled the school to make use of the Hall to split overcrowded classrooms – some of which had almost 100 children – into more manageable sizes by making double-duty of new chairs and tables as school desks and as banquet furniture. This gives Sefapanong children a better learning environment and also generates sustainable revenues through the rental of the space for weddings, meetings and – unfortunately - all-too-frequent funerals.
Involve your church
Many churches of various denominations help hundreds of Basotho through HL programs and projects. A church may chose projects with long-term commitments or one-time support. These churches find that this involvement have brought their congregations closer together as they work towards a common goal. Fellow parishioners have become acquainted who not have worked together. Contact info@helplesotho.ca
Examples:
St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church, Ottawa supports 16 orphaned girls
St. Bart’s annually sponsors 16 orphaned girls for years, for boarding, school fees, books and leadership camp. A mentoring group of 16 parishioners write the girls monthly and pray for them daily. The church prays for them regularly and has grown to love them. HL provides photos, reports and stories. Peg Herbert preaches at the church annually.
St. George’s-on-the-Hill, Etobicoke helps fund a Hostel for a Girls’ Leadership Program
St. George’s-on-the-Hill funds will help build a Hostel for the Basotho Girls’ Leadership Corps Program for 50 orphaned, talented young leaders from various villages who will be educated and trained to do youth development in their home villages.
Metropolitan United, Toronto develops a grandmother group
Metropolitan Church has a growing Grandmother Group to help grandmothers looking after multiple orphans in various ways.
St. John’s Anglican Church, Kingston funds the repairs on a burnout classroom
St. John’s has repaired a classroom which was completely destroyed by fire at Paray Primary School, Thaba Tseka. The school now has a new space for children to learn.
St. George’s Church, Ottawa funds young nuns to look after families living with HIV/AIDS
St. George’s provides funds for the training and on-going support for these young nuns to learn how to effectively help 45 people living in abject poverty, ill with AIDS and TB in mountain villages.
Holy Trinity Church, North Gower
Holy Trinity has twinned with a small Anglican parish in the tiny village of Raphoka to provide funds and friendship.
Involve your club or group
Smaller groups have made a huge impact on hundreds of people through Help Lesotho by supporting a single project. This can be a onetime support or on-going. Contact info@helplesotho.ca
Examples:
Book Clubs
Your book club members can support HL literacy initiatives in various ways, such as buying books purchased in Lesotho in English or Sesotho, contributing to HL libraries or literacy activities, such as peer tutoring, purchase of school supplies, etc. Your book club may also decide to provide ongoing sponsorship for a single child or grandmother. Contact carolynkennedy@helplesotho.ca
Library Club
HL is raising funds to provide books, shelves and chairs for two libraries. The two communities are so excited. When we ask the local chief what he is looking forward most to, he tells us that the opportunity for his people to learn or improve English is one of the greatest gifts in these communities where there are few books to read or places to get literacy support.
Involve your family
Involving your children or extended family is a powerful action to change lives of those who are in real need. There are many ways to connect one whole family with another by sponsoring one child or one project. Contact info@helplesotho.ca
Start a grandmother group
Help Lesotho has a number of grandmother groups raising funds and supporting projects in mountain villages. This is a powerful way to help both grandmothers and the orphans they look after. Support a Grandmother. To join or start one of these groups contact info@helplesotho.ca.
Examples:
Kingston Grandmother Connection, Kingston helps hundreds of grandmothers and orphans
Starting with four, the Kingston Grandmother Connection (KGC) now has over 180 members and raises through various ways. KGC is the main donor for the Granny’s Child Fund. KGC funded an Emergency Food Drop in August 2007 as a response to severe drought in the mountainous region of Thaba Tseka.
Amazin’ Mama’s, Guelph caters to help grandmothers and orphans
With only 3 permanent members, the Amazin’ Mamas raises an impressive amount of money holding luncheons. They educate their diners about the situation in Lesotho. In 2007, their funds bought new uniforms, shoes and clothing for the needy orphans and vulnerable children of Katlehong Primary School.
Solar Grannies, Edmonton provide solar ovens to grannies
Solar Grannies have funded the purchase of more than 50 solar ovens to grandmothers caring for their orphaned grandchildren. Solar oven reduce the toxic fumes from cow dung, the cost of purchasing paraffin and time spent collecting firewood.
Grandmothers Helping Grandmothers, Fredericton provide help in remote villages
Through the making and selling of Christmas wreaths, the Grandmothers Helping Grandmothers have raised significant funds for HL’s Grandmother Support Program in remote villages.
Go Go Grannies, Toronto begin helping their African peers
HL’s newest Grandmother group raises fund for HL Grandmother Support Program. One Go Go Grannies event included an open house where individuals paid a fee to view neighbouring lovely renovated condominiums.
Start a fundraising group
Volunteer Opportunities
HL relies extensively
on a community of volunteers to ensure that its many projects
succeed. If you are interested in joining our volunteer team
either in Canada or Lesotho please review current opportunities and contact directorprograms@helplesotho.ca.
Self-funded Internships more more
Lesotho
Application form PDF Word
Letter to prospective volunteers PDF
Who Are We Really Helping- Thoughts from the Roof of Africa - Alex Way PDF
Volunteering Abroad PDF
Hold a Fundraiser or Dinner Party
You may decide to hold a fundraiser and through the
HL office determine where to best direct the funds raised.
Event Planning Guide
This file gives you all the information you need to host, cook for or arrange a successful dinner party/event to raise funds. |
Sponsor a Child or Renew your Sponsorship
Click here for more information. |
Support a Project Individually or with a Group
Manageable, accountable, costed with defined leadership in Lesotho. Check the Projects page for more information. Please email info@helplesotho.ca. |
The Rockcliffe Park Public School Help Lesotho Party Giving Initiative
RPPS children have chosen to forgo party gifts in favour of supporting their peers at the Mokoena School. For more information check out the RPPS page. Click here. |
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