Report 2005 – DLN monitoring visit to Lesotho
Thursday 1st December
In the morning we had an appointment at Beautiful Gate, a children’s home in Maseru, at 9:00 am. The purpose of the visit was for us to get an impression of the institution to see whether it could eventually be a future partner for DLN. It was also to do two DLN-members a favour in line of monitoring. Malene and Klaus Brask Nielsen have collected some money in Denmark and sent them to Beautiful Gate as funding for new premises. We wanted to go and see what their money had been used for.
Ray Haakinson met with us and told us all about the history of the institution, and the work they do. Sue and Ray Haakinson are missionaries from South Africa and Zimbabwe, and they have been in Lesotho for more than 10 years. In 1997 they got aware that abandoned children/babies ended up in the hospital, and they were not really taken care of. Sue and Ray Haakinson got permission to go into the hospital and take care of the babies. They soon realised that the hospital was not a good place for the babies unless they were very ill, and they got permission to take some babies home to take care of them there. In 2001 they got rooms by Save the Children (in Maseru station area), and they employed 7 ladies to take care of 7 babies.
Now they have a rented house in Ha Thetsane, and they have 25 children and 28 staff members to look after them. They pay the staff local salaries, money comes from donations, and they are always looking for funds and donations. The Chinese factories in the area give R 1000,- per month, a positive surprise. 80% of the funding comes from private and church donations. Unicef funds specific things since 2004, but it is difficult to get funding for salaries. They use mainly private funds for salaries.
Beautiful Gate is a temporary place for children until adoption. Up to now 103 children have been through B.G. Up to now there were 42 adoptions, others went back to their families, and 14 children has died. Only one of the 103 children has a disability. 20 babies have turned from being HIV-positive to being HIV-negative. It is probably a matter of babies having antibodies from the mother at birth and turning negative later. HIV-positive children at B.G. get antiretroviral from the Clinton Foundation.
They have developed adoption criteria with Department of Social Welfare; few years ago Lesotho had no adoption criteria. Social Welfare does all the adoption procedures. The law says that only someone who lives in Lesotho can adopt a child, because Social Welfare cannot make follow up if they live abroad. Most abandoned children are found in Maseru, in the mountain areas they find dead children.
They have got a large piece of land in Ha Thetsane, and they have started building a new big centre. There will be room for 50 children, a chapel and multipurpose house, a clinic, a training centre with accommodation for 25 people and a preschool. Malene and Klaus Brask Nielsen’s donation has been spent for building baby-houses. We went down to the new plot to see the construction work and the half-completed houses. It looks very good.
We left Beautiful Gate at 11:00 am with the impression of a very well organised and well working institution.