Charities and Patronages
Charities and Patronages
Although Prince Harry is currently focusing on his military career he wants to show his support for a few organisations that reflect issues he cares about both in the UK and abroad.
Prince Harry is Patron of five charities and organisations: Dolen Cymru (The Wales Lesotho Link), MapAction, The City Salute Appeal, WellChild and Sentebale, which he founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho.
Dolen Cymru has been working for over 20 years to promote friendship and understanding between the people of Wales and her twinned nation of Lesotho, in southern Africa.
The Prince is Dolen Cymru’s first Royal Patron, building on Prince Harry’s current involvement in Lesotho with his own charity Sentebale.
Also working with an international focus, MapAction helps aid agencies by providing crucial situational mapping in the event of natural and humanitarian disasters.
MapAction teams have worked all over the world, including in Lesotho and in Sri Lanka following the Tsunami in 2005. Prince Harry became Patron of MapAction in March 2007.
In March 2007, Prince Harry also became the first Royal Patron of WellChild, the only UK charity caring for the individual needs of all sick children in the UK..
On 27th March 2008, Prince William and Prince Harry became Joint Patrons of the City Salute Appeal, a major open air event organised to celebrate and support this country’s armed forces and their families and to raise money for injured servicemen and women. Click here to visit the website.
On 21st April, Prince William and Prince Harry visited the Defence Medical Services Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court in Surrey as Joint Patrons of City Salute. Click here to read the story.
Sentebale
In 2006, Prince Harry founded Sentebale, a charity to help orphans in Lesotho.
Prince Harry has visited Lesotho, a small African nation in the south of Africa, several times and was moved by the plight of children orphaned by the Aids pandemic which has devastated the country.
Together with his great friend Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, the younger brother of King Letsie III, Prince Harry set up Sentebale to offer long-term support to community organisations working with children and young people, and in particular to those working with orphans.
Sentebale is a word that people in Lesotho use when they say good-bye to each other: it means “forget-me-not”.
It has been chosen as the name of the new charity because the two Princes see its work as a memorial to the charity work of their own mothers; and because its aim as an organisation is to ensure that Lesotho, and the current plight of its children, is not forgotten.
During his gap year in 2004 Prince Harry spent time working with various charities and organisations in the country and made a documentary to raise awareness of the country's problems: access to education, AIDS and poverty.
Titled “The Forgotten Kingdom – Prince Harry in Lesotho” it covers some of the projects with which Harry was involved, including the Mants’ase Orphanage near Mohale’s Hoek.
The programme included interviews with Harry, Prince Seeiso, who helped organise the trip, as well as doctors and aid workers. It also included footage shot by Harry himself on his own video camera.
At the same time as the documentary, the Red Cross Lesotho Fund was launched by the British Red Cross to help support HIV/AIDS and community projects in Lesotho.
International sales from the documentary and donations raised around £1 million and this money was put into 18 different community-based projects working with disadvantaged children. Sentebale has taken over from the Red Cross Lesotho Fund to continue this work.
On a return visit in 2004, Prince Harry was delighted to find improvements had already taken place at the Mants’ase Orphanage, including new solar panels for electricity, perimeter fencing, beds and mattresses, oil heaters and carpets. Prince Harry also visited Liketso, a 10-month-old victim of abuse, who had improved much since the last time he saw her.
He returned again to Lesotho to see more of his charity's work in April 2006.
Although Prince Harry is focusing on his military career, he has raised money for the charity, principally by playing in sponsored polo matches during 2006. Click here to visit the Sentebale website.
In 2007 Sentebale set up a new networking website called Letsema to help organisations work together to help combat poverty in Lesotho. Click here to visit the Letsema website.
Click here to read a feature, dated 20th March 2008, by Chief Executive Geoffrey Matthews about Sentebale's progress so far.
In July 2008, Prince Harry joined an army expedition to Lesotho to provide practical support for community projects. Click here to read the story.