Child Sponsorship
Since the earliest days of Lesedi, it has been apparent that some families are unable to pay the nominal school fees charged at Lesedi (US$102 per year, including 2 hot meals on each school day). To continue at school, many of the children need financial support.

To address this issue, we decided to introduce a sponsorship scheme for children requiring assistance. The project started in early 2018 and immediately started to make a difference. Many of the children have had a very difficult start in life and without the sponsorship scheme their education would be extremely limited, with most not able to complete Primary education. Child sponsorship gives them a massive opportunity to improve their circumstances in life.

Future Plans
Four years after the start of Lesedi, with the initial intake of pre-school children, some of those pioneer pupils are now in Grade 4. The transformation has been remarkable. The children at Lesedi are energetic, confident and full of hope for the future. The exposure to foreign tourists visiting the school is proving hugely beneficial to the Lesedi pupils, improving their confidence, self-belief and ambitions.

However, encouraging the children to dream brings with it a huge responsibility. We feel it would be irresponsible to only provide a primary school education, given that the children would then either drop out of school or enrol at a rural secondary school which is likely to have very few resources. Assuming we can generate sufficient funding, the intention is to add a Secondary School at Lesedi in due course.

There is a high incidence of HIV and AIDS in the community, including some of the school children. The nearest public clinic is 28km from the village, and transport costs are unaffordable for most people. We have just received approval to build a Medical Clinic on land adjacent to Lesedi school and construction will start soon.

The Child Sponsorship program will continue to expand as more children are identified as requiring sponsorship. There are still children in the surrounding areas who are not attending school, particularly girls whose education is traditionally viewed as less important given they will eventually marry and leave the family. Our mission is to get as many of these children back into school as possible.

We are continuing our discussions with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education for approval to introduce Special Needs classes at Lesedi. The Ministry has advised that Lesedi does not currently have enough children to warrant a special needs class, although we are hoping to reverse this decision.