In May 2008, students at Miramichi Valley High School raised $2,117 to help orphaned children halfway around the world by collecting loose change at lunch hours; raffling a donated gift basket; sponsoring a 12 hour homeless event; and holding a benefit concert. Miramichi is a city of less than 20,000 people on Canada’s east coat, halfway around the world from the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. But, like many other Canadians, its teachers and students had been touched by the work of an Ottawa-based organization called Help Lesotho.

Such efforts as theirs are the backbone of the organization’s budget, which reached $706,000 in 2007. One Ottawa school, for example, has sold Advent calendars, held coin drives, and made Christmas angels for the past three years. Canadian church groups and churches, schools, and individuals, groups and corporations provide funding and donations to community development and educational initiatives.

Lesotho has the third highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world, and its population declined to 1.8 million in 2007 from 2.2. million in 2000. Life expectancy for men is 31, 36 for women, and more than 30% of Lesotho’s children are orphans living with their grandmothers or in child-headed households. Only 8% of children who enter primary school graduate from high school.

Yet in 2000, when Peg Herbert first heard about Lesotho from Sister Alice Mputsoe of the Sisters of Charity, one of her students in a master’s course in educational psychology at the University of Ottawa, few donors were supporting programs there. It was, says Herbert,  the women of Lesotho who were holding the country together by sheer force of will without any resources. At Sister Alice’s invitation, Herbert spent five weeks in Lesotho in August 2004, visiting schools and speaking to teachers, students and aid workers to find ways to keep Basotho children in school.

Returning to Canada, determined to help the women and children, Herbert resigned from the university to create Help Lesotho by focusing on “small, discrete and hands-on projects that people can relate to.” Such projects include twinning 14 Canadian schools with schools in Lesotho; programs to support orphans; micro-economic projects to help people start self-sustaining businesses, encouraging Canadian volunteers to share their skills, and fundraising and donations of textbooks and reading materials. The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association of Ottawa and its 15,000 teachers, for example, have spent two years raising $120,000 to fund a youth centre in the village of Pitseng, which will be managed by two youth and two grandmothers and will provide a library and books, meeting and workshop rooms, and sports areas.

Today, Help Lesotho cares for 7,500 HIV-AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children and runs hostels, provides school fees and uniforms, operates 15 schools, and supports more than 400 grandparents through special Grandmother Days. It also promotes food sustainability, provides solar cookers and trains orphaned youth in citizenship duties, because "there just aren’t enough adults to go around," Herbert said. Its programs include child sponsorship; HIV/AIDS education, prevention, counselling and testing; gender equity; education and literacy development; leadership development among orphans and vulnerable  children, out of school youth and teachers; grandmother support; and support for building governance capacity and community engagement. Help Lesotho has “four non-negotiables: gender equity, HIV/AIDS, financial accountability and the rights of women and children,” Herbert says. “Everything else is decided ‘on the ground.’ We choose project leaders — often school principals — to become our liaisons. They define the needs.”

Herbert sees the Lesotho people’s strong faith, especially among the children, as a catalyst for change. "The children have a faith that is really quite remarkable," she said. "Sometimes that is all they have. The amount of death is beyond my capacity to express, but the faith of the Lesotho is very inspiring." Despite the sadness of Lesotho's situation, Herbert finds tremendous joy in her work. “I get to see children going to school who know now that someone cares that they’re alive. I get to know that a grandmother looking after 12 kids has food and knows that there is some kind of future for these children. There are so many real heroes.”

This story was compiled from various feature articles and news stories found on the Help Lesotho website, including MVHS fundraiser is success thanks to school and community support, by Edna Williston in the June 13 2008 Miramichi Leader; a story entitled Classroom encounter led to Lesotho project, March 10, 2005, University of Ottawa Gazette; an article entitled Peg Herbert: Defining Heroism by Linda Scales; and a column entitled Goats and beads and elephant dung by Clyde Sanger in the Glebe Report January 18, 2008.

For more stories about children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, see:

African, Canadian grandmothers reach out to help AIDS orphans

Centre brings women together in African slum to care for AIDS orphans

Campaign to educate AIDS orphans in Uganda began with one child's courage

Coping with the grief and loss of AIDS: memory projects bring hope to Africa

Fishmongering brings self-help to HIV-positive people in Homa Bay

Kenya women's network focuses on local food sources to support people living with AIDS

Successful model sustains AIDS orphans by rebuilding villages sustainably

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