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Msizi Africa supports a Basotho team feeding orphans in their community from funds generated by selling milk from a herd of dairy cows. The charity intends to leave Lesotho after setting up a sustainable Milk Project to generate an income to fund the feeding programmes.

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According to the World Bank and the Lesotho Bureau of Statistics, 75% of Basothos are either poor or vulnerable to poverty. People living in poverty cannot access basic services; clean running water, nutritious food, and medical care. Lesotho has one of the highest HIV prevalences in the world – over 23% of the 2.1 million population is HIV+. Unemployment is high, at 23%. Parents are often forced to leave their children to try and find work in South Africa. This, and the HIV crisis which has wiped out a generation of parents, has created around 300,000 orphans and vulnerable children. Shockingly, that is the equivalent of the UK having 9-10 million orphans wandering the streets looking for food.

Without anyone to look after them, children cannot find food. This leads to hunger, and hunger leads to malnutrition. Malnutrition is devastating and can be irreversible. It can lead to children being low weight for their height (wasting), short for their age (stunting) and low weight for their age (underweight). It reduces children’s ability to achieve their potential; many children are forced to drop out of school in order to find food, but even if you’re in school, if you’re hungry you won’t be able to concentrate. Coming to Msizi Africa’s feeding programmes provides children with a nutritious meal which enables them to stay at school. The education they receive reduces the likelihood of being dependent on charity as adults, so it is critical to keep children in school in order to raise the whole country out of poverty.

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Msizi Africa was founded on 6th June 2007 and has raised over £1.4million and provided more than 3 million meals to over 1,000 children. It took a long time to assemble the knowledge and a team with the expertise to take it forward, but we made a big plan in 2020. At the height of the pandemic where everything was more and more uncertain, we had to ensure this project could continue and grow without us. We planned to get a herd of dairy cows, sell milk, make money to buy the food, and leave our colleagues to it.

Mooana, our first cow, arrived in September 2020 and produced milk which reduced the feeding budget by £300 a month as we no longer needed to purchase milk. As of May 2022 we have seven cows – with an eight imminent!

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Time Partners is hosting a pub quiz for Msizi in order to raise money to support the purchase of cows. Each cow costs approximately £2,500. We are hoping to raise enough for one cow! Please support this important mission.