Prince Harry, Britain’s royal soldier and humanitarian, would like to spend more time helping children in Africa.
The 23-year-old lieutenant, who was decorated for his service in Afghanistan, was in the African kingdom of Lesotho last week to work with Sentebale — the charity he and Lesotho’s Prince Seeiso founded in the memory of Harry’s late mother, Princess Diana.
Harry spoke with reporters recently about balancing his army life with his charity work.
“I wish I could be out here more often,” he said while visiting a newly opened center for abused children. “I do the most I can to come out here and see the kids.”
Harry and Seeiso founded Sentebale — which means “forget me not” in Sesotho — to help orphans and vulnerable children in a nation of 1.8 million people where about 300,000 children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.
The brightly colored Lesotho Child Counseling Unit is just one of a number of projects in which Sentebale is involved. Others include efforts to treat and educate about HIV/AIDS.
TEMPORARY HAVEN
The Child Counseling Unit — set on a hilltop outside Maseru — provides a temporary haven for up to 40 children who have been sexually or physically abused. It was started in 2002 by a child counselor who housed children in a shipping container at her home, but had to turn many away for lack of space and money.
Sentebale stepped in and built the new thatched-roof complex for about US$190,000, with help from Standard Lesotho Bank. Sentebale is partly funded through fundraising projects and donations.
Children stay for an average of three months, as the center seeks help from qualified counselors to enable them return to their lives and, where possible, their families. Most are girls aged from 18 months to the early teens.
KNOWLEDGE
At the shelter on Wednesday, Harry — the third in line to the British throne — greeted village elders with a traditional two-handed shake, showing respect for and knowledge of the cultural ways of Lesotho.
“For us it is a wonderful relationship,” said Paul Morolong, chairman of the shelter. “If possible we would keep him here.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS