News

Monday January 7th 2008

Dolen Cymru has appointed a new Development Coordinator. Sarah Jones has over four years' experience working for a local Welsh charity and brings considerable fundraising experience to the organisation. Sarah said "I'm thrilled to be given this exciting opportunity to help Dolen Cymru develop its future plans to consolidate and grow the links with Lesotho." Sarah has already started work on organising a national conference in June for organisations that work in partnership with Lesotho to look at ways we can improve the coordination of the sector and to share our common experiences. The conference will be held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff and is supported by the Welsh Rugby Union and Princes Harry and Seeiso's charity, Sentebale.

Thursday November 8th 2007

Dolen Cymru Christmas Cards - NOW FOR SALE!!

Each pack contains 6 cards featuring 2 designs

Buy 1 pack - £2.50, 5 packs for £10 (1 free pack) or 10 packs for only £20 (2 free packs)!

If you wish to purchase our Christmas cards, phone or e-mail us on: 029 2049 7390 or dolencymru@ btinternet.com

Monday 8th October 2007

~ New address for Dolen Cymru Office ~

Due to the closure of the Coal Exchange, Dolen Cymru's Office has now moved to a new address.

All correspondence should now be sent to the following address: Dolen Cymru, Enterprise House, 127 Bute Street, Cardiff CF10 5LE.

The telephone number and e-mail address remains the same: Tel: 029 20497390 or E-mail: dolencymru@btinternet.com

Thursday 29 March 2007

PRINCE HARRY TO BECOME PATRON of DOLEN CYMRU - WALES LESOTHO LINK.

Prince Harry is to become the first Royal Patron of Welsh charity, Dolen Cymru -the Wales - Lesotho Link.

This is the first time Prince Harry has taken on the patronage of an established charity and his association with Dolen Cymru will begin immediately.

Dolen Cymru has been working for over 20 years to promote friendship and understanding between the people of Wales and her twinned nation of Lesotho in southern Africa. Since 1985, Dolen Cymru has created links on many levels, changing the lives of people in both Lesotho and Wales. Dolen Cymru works in many fields, including Education, Health, the Churches, Culture and Governance.

Prince Harry’s interest in Lesotho was sparked when he did volunteer work with AIDS orphans in the small country while on his gap year.

Dolen Cymru President, Dr Carl Clowes said of the new Patronage “We are delighted to welcome a Patron who has shown such a personal commitment to the people of Lesotho and, having seen at first hand the nature of Prince Harry’s contribution already, we know that we will gain considerably from his support in the future.”

Dolen Cymru looks forward to working with Prince Harry to raise awareness of the problems facing our twinned country and also about the valuable work that Dolen Cymru and her partner organisation in Lesotho, Laquama le Wales (the Lesotho Wales Link) are doing.

Wednesday 4 October 2006

LESOTHO UNFURLS 'PEACEFUL' FLAG 

The small mountain kingdom of Lesotho is marking its 40th anniversary of independence from the United Kingdom by flying a new more peaceful flag. The military emblem of a shield, spear and knobkerrie is replaced by a traditional cone-shaped hat on the blue, white and green flag. The hat worn by indigenous Basotho people was on the first independence flag but was replaced after a coup. Lesotho says its new flag shows it "at peace with itself and its neighbours". As part of the anniversary celebrations, King Letsie III planted trees at the foot of the statue of the founder of the Basotho nation, King Moshoeshoe I. And a huge diamond found in a Lesotho mine is going on sale in Antwerp. The world's largest diamond reported to have been found this century is a 603 carat white diamond named "Lesotho's promise". The nation, devastated by Aids and saddled with big debts, has also published a major long-term development plan. Lesotho's next elections are due in 2007. Courtesy of bbc.co.uk

Tuesday, 7 February 2006

LESOTHO STARVES IN RICH SA'S SHADOW

Lesotho's relationship with South Africa has long been one of rich neighbour, poor neighbour, as the BBC News website's Justin Pearce found when he visited a village in southern Lesotho. There's not enough food. The fields have not been planted." Moloko Lekhoana stands on the wall of an earth dam that he and his neighbours are building by hand, and looks at the ruined soil that surrounds his village of Morifi, in southern Lesotho. His situation is no different from that of 500,000 people in Lesotho - a quarter of the population - who don't have enough food. "Last year I produced only three bags of maize," Mr Lekhoana says. It is not hard to believe that this land is unproductive. In places it looks like an elephant's hide: hard, grey and crinkled. Elsewhere, the soil has been eroded into brittle ridges - in one place a column of earth rises two metres high, topped by a single bush whose roots are all that holds the soil together. Over the hill, you can look down onto a plain where a line of trees marks the South African border. The commercial farms on the other side are smooth and green.

Overgrazing

Mr Lekhoana puts the desolation in his village down to overgrazing: "Animals have been wandering around everywhere." Agricultural experts also point to the practice of monoculture - growing a single crop, usually maize, year after year - as something else that contributes to the weakening of the soil. In South Africa, the farms are larger, so there is less pressure on the land and the soil has time to recover between crops. The damage now done, the cattle are fewer than they once were in Morifi, which is why Mr Lekhoana has nothing to pull the plough this year. "Cattle died because they did not have enough grazing," Mr Lekhoana says. "Or they were sold because people are poor - so they can take care of their families." Almost one in three people in Lesotho is HIV positive. After a few dry years, no one has cash left to pay for medical treatment - for many families, cattle are the only saleable asset, even if getting rid of the livestock means there is no chance of ploughing the following year. The HIV epidemic is one legacy of Lesotho's long history of contact with South Africa. With Lesotho's land long unable to support its population, generations of Basotho became a source of cheap labour for the mines "next door" - migrant workers became Lesotho's most valuable export. That has changed over the last decade, as mineral deposits have become exhausted, and South Africa's economy has become less dependent on mining. "People have been retrenched from the mines. They used to help with farming needs, but not any longer," Mr Lekhoana says.

Lean Season

Lesotho may be exporting less labour these days, but its current big export is water, through the Lesotho Highlands project: a series of dams and pipes that takes water from Lesotho's rainy highlands to quench the thirst of South African industry. Yet most Basotho farmers have no reserves of water to carry them through a lean season - this year's rains follow four years of drought. The dam that is being built in Morifi is a joint project of the Lesotho government and the World Food Programme, which supplies food to those who work on the construction. The workers - many of them beyond middle age, and the majority of them women - move back and forth with wheelbarrows, piling up earth and stamping it down by hand to raise the dam wall higher. It has taken them a year to get this far - maybe by this time next year, they will have started reclaiming the gullies and storing water. But there are a lot more villages in Lesotho that look like Morifi with its gullies and parched soil, and not many of them have dams. The labour market and the water market define Lesotho's relationship with South Africa - so dependent is Lesotho on "next door" that some people wonder why it is a separate state.

Unequal Neighbours

The answer lies in history. In the 19th century Basotho people found themselves trapped between the Voortrekkers - the descendents of Dutch settlers who migrated into the South African interior - and the Maluti mountains. An agreement with Britain saw Basotholand - as it was then called - formed as a protectorate on what little land the Basotho managed to keep. When South Africa was unified in 1910, Basotholand remained a separate entity, which became independent from Britain in 1966. But economic independence was never a possibility for a country with so many people and so little arable land. South Africa employed workers from Lesotho for as long as they were needed - but when the jobs dried up they had to go back to villages like Morifi rather than seeking new opportunities in the expanding economy next door.

The result: a land where one in four people go hungry.  Courtesy of bbc.co.uk