Activities
Dolen Cymru has traditionally focused its work on these main areas; education, health, cultural exchange and churches. However, over the years, much work has also been done in the following fields; youth development, governance, civil society linking, sports, agriculture and the environment, fundraising appeals, the arts, media and forging local government links.
Below is a brief overview of Dolen Cymru’s recent activities.
Education
Dolen Cymru has gained a reputation for excellence in the field of education for global citizenship. Through linking over 80 schools in Wales and Lesotho, facilitating over 50 teacher exchanges, developing teaching resources for use in the classroom and promoting continuing professional development through our Lesotho Teacher Placement Programme, Dolen Cymru has become an important conduit for learning about a developing country, appreciating different cultures and establishing friendships across geographic, cultural and economic divides. As a result, more and more schools want to link with schools in Lesotho with around 20 new schools linked in 2005-06 alone.
In higher and further education, Dolen Cymru has successfully facilitated links between Universities, researchers and teacher training colleges. The link between Trinity College, Carmarthen and the Lesotho College of Education has been highly successful in the last two years, with boxes of numeracy teaching resources being successfully developed for use in classrooms in Lesotho. Training and distribution of these in 2006 has received high acclaim in the schools and college that received them.
Currently, Dolen Cymru receives project funding from the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) for two education programmes; the reciprocal visits programme and the Lesotho Teacher Placement Programme. The former is a scheme whereby teachers can visit their linked schools in Wales and Lesotho for a week to ten days, spending time in the classroom and staying with colleagues. This programme has taken the number of teachers exchanged annually to between 24 and 40 and demand for exchanges is set to continue to increase as more schools form links with Lesotho.
The Lesotho Teacher Placement Programme is the second part of the WAG-funded project. Over three years this programme enables 24 Welsh teachers to live in Lesotho and teach at a local school for six months. For more information on the Lesotho Teacher Placement Programme (including information on how to apply) please click here.
Health
Health Links have developed in different ways over the last 18 years. Early exchanges led to visits by the Gymdeithas Meddygol to Lesotho and collections of basic healthcare equipment from clinics in Wales for use in Lesotho. Following a visit by the Lesotho Minister of Health to Wales, a three-year project funded by the NLCB was established in 1997 to support the mental health field and to further this aim, a mental health booklet for Village Health Workers has been produced. It aimed specifically to improve skills amongst the village health workers. Secondments of health personnel from Wales have been numerous and Dolen Cymru also arranges at least one elective placement for medical students from Wales at hospitals in Lesotho. There has also been some reciprocal training for Lesotho health staff in Wales.
Dolen Cymru is looking to establish a long-term programme of work alongside the Ministry of Health in Lesotho. A proposal has been made to the Ministry of Health for funding a project on Management and Prevention of HIV/AIDS in the Quthing District of Lesotho. This proposal was developed in partnership with the Lesotho Red Cross and will draw on expertise in Wales through hospital twinning. The Ministry has agreed to the project and we are currently exploring various funding opportunities.
Churches
Links between churches in Wales and Lesotho have been an important part of Dolen Cymru since its inception. The fact that Dolen's first President was the Rt Rev Dr Gwilym O Williams, former Archbishop of Wales, perhaps ensured that this was so. For many years another Archbishop, Alwyn Rice Jones, chaired the Churches Sub-Committee. It is currently headed by the Catholic Bishop of Wrexham, Edwin Regan. Exchange visits by church leaders have helped ensure a high profile among the churches in both countries and the link has been invigorated by a whole series of church youth exchanges.
There are excellent examples of church-church links (such as the Tabernacl Church in Cardiff and Sefika Church, Maseru) and many parishes and dioceses are actively supporting Dolen Cymru’s work through membership and collections. The town of St Davids is twinned with Matsieng in Lesotho – a link that has involved the diocese of St Davids which has been active in fundraising for the building of a classroom at a school in the village.
Governance
One programme area where Dolen Cymru has been active in recent years is that of governance. Workshops have been facilitated in Lesotho on good governance, electoral transparency and the role of civil society groups in ensuring good governance. Several Unions are already linked with Unions in Lesotho and the WCVA Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Task Force, that was created to enable civil society in Wales to contribute to the achievement of the MDGs, has made Lesotho a priority country in which Welsh organisations and groups should focus their efforts.
Links between the National Assembly of Wales (NAW) and the Lesotho National Assembly (LNA) were forged in 2005 when a delegation of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Committee (CPA) Wales Branch visited Lesotho. Mike German AM and leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and John Griffiths AM, Deputy Health Minister for the Welsh Assembly Government visited the NAL in October 2005 to discuss with parliamentary colleagues there how the two national assemblies could work together to improve services to members and build the capacity of their staff. Following on from this visit, five members of staff from the LNA spend two weeks on attachment at the NAW in 2006 with further exchanges planned for the coming years.