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The Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Recreation (MYGSR) too have a young
ambassador program focused on primary and high school children. The ambassadors
speak to child about issues such as positive living with HIV and domestic violence.
Lesotho Child Council Unit (LCCU) in partnership with World Vision Lesotho publish
Children's Voice newsletter which is specific to children's issues and encourages child
contribution of articles. World Vision Lesotho in conjunction with MoSD and MSH build
local capacity by training support groups in some villages known as Community Care
Coalitions. A children's parliament is also held annually by World Vision during which
child participants (usually teenagers) hold mock debates on issues relevant to child
rights. World Vision Lesotho also fund paralegal teams who visit remote villages and
provide quasi legal information during public gatherings called “pitso's” in Sesotho.
These are ad-hoc meetings called at whim by a chief to discuss all kinds of issues.
Focus on these by government and non-government actors alike is crucial to the
successful spreading of the principles of child rights.
The National Olympic Committee and the not-for-profit organisation Kick4Life provide
education to youth on HIV through sport. They are a non-governmental organization that
delivers a range of programmes focused on tackling HIV through sports-based health
education, voluntary testing, life skills development and support in education and
employment with a particular focus on orphans and vulnerable children.Kick4Life
specifically uses soccer to attract the attention of children living on and of the street and
offers classes and counseling on children's right issues.
The MoSD in conjunction with the Republic of South Africa's adoption agency, known as
ABBA, trained approximately thirty (30) staff of residential care facilities on the
Guidelines for Standards of Care for Residential Care Facilities and operating
procedures in 2012.
Difficulties
Although Lesotho is a relatively small country geographically, its topography means that
getting from the capital city Maseru to some villages can take an entire day’s travel in a
car plus another day on horseback. Efforts to spread information are therefore time
consuming and costly. This means that most of the efforts by government and large
NGO's are concentrated on the urban centers of each District. It is left to smaller, less
equipped grass-roots organisations to get the information wider-spread to more remote
areas. Dissemination of information to these remote corners is difficult and people who
reside there often live by different rules and cultural norms to those in urban areas.
Given the need to capacitate grass-roots organisations and community leaders in order
to pass the information to a wider audience, there can be inaccuracy in the
interpretation of legal instruments. This is not intentional, rather a consequence of
information being passed through several hands. There is not just a shortage of
financial resources to disseminate information, but also a lack of human resources in
the form of sufficiently skilled trainers to educate people far and wide.