Africa-Press – Lesotho. Coming across a six year old child walking barefoot is what motivated Rorisang Tlebere to start an initiative of collecting and donating necessities such as school
shoes and clothes to the most vulnerable children. Tlebere, who resides in Maseru C-Point said he started this initiative two years back when he felt a need to buy shoes for a six year old child he came across
walking barefoot during winter. He added that he first started donating school shoes then sanitary towels and people seemed a lot more interested to the
initiative and some asked to give out donations such as clothes while others asked to pay school fees for students who needs assistance. He further said as the initiative kept growing his younger sister joined to help
him and also some of his friends collaborated in the initiative. With social media being a powerful tool nowadays, Tlebere noted that in order to collect
more donations, he took the initiative to his social media platforms where most of his followers seemed interested and supportive. “Most of our donations come
from social media where people saw my posts and responded, some shared the posts so that more people are aware of the movement and eventually contribute,”
he said. He pointed out that their initiative does not assist every person but their target is vulnerable children, saying so far they have been able to distribute about
179 school shoes and over 500 sanitary towels. He said they have been receiving
lists of names of vulnerable children from schools and to this end they have helped students from Qoaling Primary, Motimposo Primary, Moshoeshoe II Primary
and they also received calls from teachers in schools outside Maseru who need their students to be assisted. “As someone who is not a full time employee, I have had enough time to focus on
this initiative and I felt I might as well try to change someone’s life,” he said. Tlebere said he has never came across major challenges ever since he started
the initiative except that he feels that it is a challenge that he is not able to extend a helping hand to “every deserving child”. He said the goal is to
assist about 1000 children this year. His intention he said is to continue with this initiative and let it grow, noting that he is overwhelmed by its impacts
to the community and the support from the well-hearted. “We are basically a change that we need in Lesotho and if we do not stand on our feet, no one will come and bring it to us,” he challenged.
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