Focus
Sentebale - The Story so Far
20th March 2008
By Geoffrey Matthews,Chief Executive, Sentebale
Sentebale recently filed its first set of financial accounts at the Charities Commission for the period from 17 March 2006 to 31 August 2007, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to explain how the charity is doing in its first 18 months of operation.
Some tremendous work has been done so far in setting up the charity, which aims to help orphans and vulnerable children in the tiny African country of Lesotho, and in supporting local projects. By the end of August 2007 £84,000 had already been spent on donations in Lesotho, and by the end of August this year at least a further £225,000 will be spent directly on projects.
The most important message I can convey is that since Sentebale was founded, we have ensured that every penny received from the public to help Lesotho’s orphans and vulnerable children, or as a specific charitable donation or contribution from other sources (including money from the Concert for Diana), has been, or will be, spent on project activity.
Crucially, if Sentebale finds it cannot spend that money safely and successfully it stays on deposit. All the money the charity spends on the London overheads (which means paying for the part-time administrative staff who run the UK-registered charity, all the fund-raising activity and the website costs), and the money spent on the costs of the country director who runs Sentebale in Lesotho, comes from other sources - such as the funds Prince Harry raises playing polo and the money from the sale of the media rights to the ITV documentary “Lesotho: the Forgotten Kingdom”.
Before I explain more about the financial accounts, it is perhaps worth going back to the beginning. When Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso established Sentebale and became its joint patrons, their main aim was to create a charity which could support small community-based projects which really make a difference to the lives of orphans and vulnerable children in Lesotho. The charity’s support would come in the form of financial donations and, crucially, management support and advice to ensure each project supported had a genuinely sustainable future.
If their hopes for Sentebale were to be realised, the two Princes understood from the start how crucial it was to build strong foundations for the charity on the ground in Lesotho, which would mean hiring first class management and staff and setting up a proper office in the capital Maseru capable of supporting multiple projects throughout the country. The last thing either of them wanted was for the charity to distribute money fast without proper safeguards. It is worth bearing in mind that the key problem in Lesotho is not so much the lack of money but the lack of structures to reach the children who most need help. That is why Sentebale has been so keen to make establishment of such structures a priority.
Therefore, to do a proper job of setting up the charity inevitably meant spending time and some considerable money on the ground in Lesotho, and it is this period of Sentebale’s life which is represented in the accounts for the first 18 months of its operation.
These accounts include a variety of financial figures, including some identified as “recharges”, or money seemingly spent by the charity on interests not related to Sentebale. It’s probably worth explaining what those are. These various recharges referred to in the accounts reflect the fact that one of the ways the charity has kept the London overheads down is to ensure that everyone who works on Sentebale in London works part-time.
In the first year there were three staff: myself as chief executive, an administrator and a finance director, and our task was to set up the charity’s accounts systems, website, donor relations, recruitment, charitable registration in London and Lesotho, and handle other important administrative tasks. The recharges in the accounts simply reflected the fact that the two full-time employers of the Sentebale staff (The Prince of Wales, and Traditional Arts Limited) needed refunding for the time their employees – myself and my two colleagues - had spent working for Sentebale.
As for the employment costs, as chief executive I was paid £39,000 during the period, representing 18 months of my annual salary of £20,000, plus pensions and national insurance payments. £86,000 was spent on fund-raising activity and the website (of which £12,000 was for the website); £49,000 was spent on the absolutely necessary purchase of vehicles (Lesotho is a mountainous country whose lowest point is 4,500 feet above sea level); and £26,000 was spent on equipping the office in Maseru.
As for the country director, over 350 CVs were reviewed and some 24 candidates interviewed for this crucial post. Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso were delighted when Harper Brown, a chief executive in the NHS, agreed to move with his wife and teenage sons to Lesotho. Harper Brown combines his NHS experience with a practical background in aid work and as an officer in the Gurkhas; he has three degrees – in Health and Social Services, in Epidemiology and Health Planning; and in International Relations; he was brought up in East Africa. The country director’s package of between £90,000 - £100,000 represents his salary and taxable benefits, and is typical of an expatriate’s package in that it includes benefits such as healthcare, pension, accommodation and help with children’s education costs.
Our Lesotho office opened for business exactly a year after the charity’s foundation, in April 2007. The Board of Sentebale (whose meetings the two patrons, Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso, attend), encouraged Harper Brown to take between six months and a year to carry out his initial assessment exercise and to give himself the chance to recruit the team he needed on the ground.
So far, a number of projects have been supported by Sentebale, both with funding, and management support and advice. (For a full list, visit www.sentebale.org). For example, any visitor to Lesotho will see on the way in from the airport the new Child Counselling Unit – one of only two centres for abused children in the country, and successfully completed thanks to a partnership between Sentebale and Architects for Aid.
In fact, partnerships are a major way Sentebale works, and one of the reasons why some of the charitable activity doesn’t always involve donating large sums of money. In January, Sentebale piloted with Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Foundation the first of what will become a programme of camps for children living with HIV and AIDS. It was a huge success. Another notable success is the Kick4Life voluntary counselling and testing soccer days for which Sentebale secured funding from Vodafone and whose fledgling office in Lesotho Harper Brown houses and mentors – again, these are positive impacts which do not show up in the charity’s annual accounts but which make a real difference.
When Princes Harry and Seeiso visited Lesotho last November they visited a Kick4Life testing day as part of a four-day programme which covered every corner of the country, taking in projects normally each a day’s journey away. The Princes were able to fulfil this schedule thanks to the use of a helicopter, but instead of hiring one Sentebale were able to take advantage of a private donation, which saved charitable funds. More unglamorous facilitation activity has come in the form of a website Sentebale launched (www.letsema.org), which is Lesotho’s first ever database co-ordinating the contributions of different NGO’s operating in the country.
As for the future, the process of reviewing projects for possible support goes on. Among those currently being considered for donations and support are a special needs school and centre in Lesotho, and two integrated community development programmes aimed at providing the full range of welfare and educational needs for children. We expect many more projects like these will benefit from Sentebale’s support in the coming years. It’s been a great start so far, but there is much more work to be done!