Pearls For Girls Initiative

For many girls raised in relatively wealthy countries, it’s hard to understand what life can be like for girls who aren’t as fortunate. And sadly, there are girls like that around the world, those who are poor, who are hungry, who are orphaned – girls who have no-one to turn to.

The Kingdom of Lesotho is a small landlocked country (11,720 square miles), surrounded on all sides by South Africa. Lesotho is also one of the many countries that has been hard by HIV and AIDS.

According to AVERT, an international AIDS charity ,

Lesotho is a small country where 18,000 people died from AIDS in 2007, and more than 20% of the population are HIV positive. The country is also struggling to cope with 110,000 AIDS orphans. Crippling poverty combined with AIDS in Lesotho has caused average life expectancy to drop to 44 years for women and 39 for men.

Many of those who are dying are the teachers who will no longer teach, the doctors who will no longer treat, and the parents who will no longer nurture.

HelpLesotho.ca says there are many challenges that face the children of Lesotho. They include:

• Having a 1 to 2 hour walk to school (one way)
• Having no food to eat and being unable to concentrate
• Having a parent or sibling – or both – who have HIV/AIDS
• Being the head of the household while still being a child
• Not being able to pay for school fees or buy the necessary books
• Cannot be educated

Without being in that situation ourselves, we still know that without education, without hope, we cannot survive. This is where we come in.

In 2006, a woman named Mary Murphy, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, wanted to find a way to make a difference in the lives of young women. While casting about to find what she wanted, she learned about an initiative “Help Lesotho.” She says on her website, “Help Lesotho works in the mountainous regions of Lesotho, a very small country of 1.8 million people that is surrounded by South Africa.  Lesotho has the third highest incidence of HIV and AIDS in the world and approximately one third of all children are orphaned or vulnerable. ”

Together with a friend who had a pearl business, Mary came up with Pearls for Girls. Girls would gather and make pearl bracelets to help raise money for their counterparts in Losotho.

In a short period of time the Canadian teenage girls sold enough bracelets to send 14 of the orphaned girls in Lesotho to the annual “Help Lesotho Leadership Camp”. They were thrilled that they could make a difference in the lives of girls their age.  Now more teenagers are making “Pearls for Girls” bracelets and selling them to raise money for the orphans of Lesotho.  The project has now spread to other parts of Canada, Australia and the United States.

Here are some stories of girls who benefit from Pearls for Girls. Limpho is 14 years old and dreams of going to high school. Itumeleng is 17. She married because she was promised that she could go to school and help her brothers and sisters get to school. Instead, she is at home, now caring for an ill baby and may be pregnant again.

How can you be involved? Pearl Bees are being held all over and you can help organize one in your area. You can read how to organize a Pearl Bee at the Pearls for Girls website. You and your group can make bracelets that will make a difference in the lives in children in Lesotho – and maybe make a difference in the lives of your children too.

~~~~~

Images: Newscom.com and Pearls for Girls