Action Lesotho’s core objective is to assist communities in Lesotho to break the cycle of poverty by developing skills in people at all levels and of all ages, from the poorest children in the villages to small business owners and government officials. The aim is to help people to help themselves and, ultimately, help the country towards an economically sustainable future.
We are helping people learn how to produce their own food, to generate income from enterprises, to meet the humanitarian needs of the most disadvantaged and to become effective agents of change in their own communities and the wider country.
We are effecting long-term change by delivering occupational skills, developing local management skills and training the trainers of future generations, so that the skills we impart will be perpetuated within the community.
Over the period 2016 to 2018, the intensive training and capacity-building we provide will help create over 300 sustainable jobs in tourism, arts, crafts, textiles and agriculture. Our aim is that the income from each job will be sufficient to support all members of a family (typically 3-4 people) above the poverty line of R26 per person per day, thus breaking the cycle of poverty for over 1,000 people who have suffered from extreme poverty and malnutrition for several generations.
This is a pilot project, in which a wide variety of government agencies are engaged, so that they, too, will learn from the training, and will be empowered to roll out similar programmes on a national scale.