School WASH initiatives spill over to impact communities in Lesotho
Every child in Lesotho deserves an opportunity to learn in a safe and healthy environment
The road to Qholaqhoe High School, perched on an isolated mountaintop in northern Lesotho, is long and rocky. Here and there, a peach tree blossoms pink or white against the drought-parched yellow hills. Here and there – amongst the aluminum-sided shacks and the round thatched-roof houses – you see a backyard gravestone.
“Most of the children at this school don’t have parents. Either they’re orphans due to the AIDS epidemic, or their parents have gone to work in South Africa.” Deputy Principal Lebohang Khakhane points to a far mountain range, where the neighboring country of South Africa is visible from the school.
“So the students come to school if they want to. It’s their own decision. Some students walk 5-10 kilometres to get here every day. And sometimes they say, ‘we don't have any food to eat. How can we come to school?’”
In Lesotho, a country with the world’s second-highest HIV rate, the virus affects every part of life and is necessarily interwoven into every part of UNICEF’s action on behalf of children and families. But there is also a more silent killer at work.
Nearly one in ten children dies, in Lesotho, before reaching their fifth birthday. Too many of these deaths are due to the effects of unclean water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene. To help combat this, UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) funding is supporting UNICEF and the Lesotho Government’s Department of Rural Water Supply (DRWS) to implement water and sanitation initiatives at 20 schools like this one across the country. Here, students are provided with clean, safe water and toilets. They learn lifesaving hygiene skills that can turn them into vital ‘agents of change’ – both now and into the future, as they become parents themselves. And whole communities are being transformed as a result.
