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Africa's Gift > Our origins

Our origins in Lesotho

Africa’s Gift began life like many community groups and projects. A small group of like-minded people getting together with an idea for making things better. In many ways Africa’s Gift was the original test group for the services and help we now provide. We were given the opportunity to form a relationship with a community group in Malealea, Lesotho. The community group continues to be one of our partners and is now known as the Malealea Development Trust, located at the multi-award winning Malealea Lodge.   

Our first community project involved transforming a small piece of turfed land in Royston, South Yorkshire into an eco-friendly sustainable garden powered by solar energy and wind turbines. The experience and knowledge we gained from the project was exchanged with the staff and pupils at the Malealea school. For many of those involved in the project whether they were based in the UK or in Lesotho the project was life-changing.
 
The UK participants saw what they could achieve. They realised they’d made a dramatic improvement not only in their home community but in Lesotho where their knowledge and experience had brought electricity and all the benefits that go with it to a community.
 
At its most basic level the project brought science and technology to life, gave it a relevance and context that all too often can be missing from conventional science lessons.  

It reconnected a group of young people with education and caused them to re-evaluate their career ambitions. The students' self-belief and confidence increased even more when the project was case studied in the National Science Museum and at the Royal Geographical Society.

After we’d seen the scale of the benefits community partnerships can produce we decided to formalise what we were doing and form Africa’s Gift. Africa’s Gift is a registered charity. Our charity number is 1149830