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Can you imagine what it is like to walk 11 miles (18km) to school without breakfast? This is what the children in my home village of Sexaxa in Maun, Botswana have to do every school day. Can you imagine what it would be like if you could make a difference to these young lives and actually see it happen?
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Building a school is the longer term aim for these children who have to get up at 3am every day to walk to the nearest school to start at 7am. That's without breakfast and then without lunch they have to walk home to have an evening meal hopefully around 6pm. They drink lots of water to stave off the hunger pangs during their 15 hour day but that doesn't stop them feeling weak, unable to concentrate and very often falling prey to sickness resulting in them not being able to go to school and advance in their education as they all want to dearly!
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I am a princess in Sexaxa so this issue is very important to me - particularly as I used to be one of them. Luckily I was quite strong and used to run to school in 2 hours and then walk back after school in 4 hours. Something needs to be done urgently so the initial aim is to provide a school bus in order to alleviate their suffering as soon as possible. All we need to raise for that is £8000 and pictures of the first trip will be published on this website within a month of that target being reached. We will also look for sponsorship from a local restaurant to provide a free breakfast for the children when they arrive to ensure they have enough energy to get them through a good learning day.
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My late grandfather, Mr Moalosi, was village chief from 1974 to 2011. He spent his life trying to do something about this travesty - see here - but died without success.
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I am running various Botswana Projects with the general objective of helping the less fortunate people who live in my home city, Maun, the tourism capital of Botswana and the safari centre of Africa. I have set up a modelling agency to provide an occupation for local girls who would otherwise have nothing to look forward to apart from getting married one day to have children. The agency runs regular beauty events during the year to raise money by means of sponsorship. The models also organise a party for the kids at least once a year - see here for the one they organised for Christmas 2010.
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I also plan to provide affordable leisure facilities for teenagers and better entertainment in the evenings for all who find the only activity available to them is drinking in the local bar. In particular I am going to start up salsa dancing as an alternative form of entertainment.
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But this is about the children and after 5 years of hard work we managed to collect £6035 from 167 contributors which we used to purchase and deliver a mini-bus to Sexaxa Village at Christmas 2014 - please see pictures and credits here. Any further contributions received will be used to provide fuel for the minibus.
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Take care of the children and take care of you,
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Princess Boikanyo
Mrs Commonwealth International 2012
Director BME
info@princessboikanyo.org
www.boikanyo.com
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Progress report in December 2014: 5 years after this project started we finally collected enough to purchase a minibus and send it to Botswana - please see the pictures and credits here - you should have been there to see how pleased the villagers were to receive it. Thank you all so much for your generous contributions! Any further contributions received will be used to provide fuel for the minibus. Please see sexaxa-village.com for more information about my home village.
See here for the kids as they look when they're walking to school!
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See here for more pictures from the Christmas Party we organised for the kids in December 2011. In July 2013 we organised a beauty pageant and entertainment for the kids. This year (2014) we are organising a huge party for them over Christmas with lots of presents.
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