Msizi Africa
Msizi Africa is an international charitable organisation set up by Lucy Caslon in 2007. Msizi means 'helper' in Zulu. The charity, based in South London and originally named Mants'ase Children's Home UK, is registered with the UK Charity commission and provides children in Lesotho with nutritious food. Msizi Africa actively supports and closely works with a number of local projects and collaborates with Letsema, a network of service providers working with orphans and vulnerable children in Lesotho. Since October 2015, Msizi Africa Lesotho has been registered as a Lesotho registered charitable organisation.
History
Lucy Caslon first heard about Mants'ase Children's Home, an orphanage in Lesotho, in news reports of Prince Harry's visit to the home. At the end of an extensive trip through Africa in 2006 she decided to work at the orphanage as a volunteer. During this time she recognized that while the children in the home were fed, the food was not optimal in terms of nutrition and healthiness especially taking into consideration that many of the 50 children living in the home suffered from HIV/AIDS infection and other health issues. She received financial help from family and friends back in the UK which allowed her to buy fruit, vegetables, meat and fish to complement the children's normal diet of maize meals and cabbage. Realizing the positive effects of this healthier nutrition on the children's wellbeing Lucy Caslon founded the Mants'ase Children's Home UK charity after she arrived back in London. It was first set up specifically to benefit the lives of the children at the Mants'ase orphanage. Later the charity was re-branded as Msizi Africa as the support was extended to children in South Africa and Zambia.Msizi Africa grew significantly after Lucy Caslon became one of eight winners of Vodafones 2008's World of Difference programme which allowed her to work full-time for her charity. Impressed by her success one of her corporate supporters decided to match Vodafone's scheme and continue to pay her salary for 2010 and 2011 enabling the charity in the following years to help to relieve the hardship of around thousand children in Africa, where the AIDS pandemic has left many without parents or an extended family. Besides providing food Msizi Africa also repairs the houses of children who live on their own to ensure safer living conditions for them.
In 2008 the Cape Town charity Beautiful Gate had to care for additional several hundred mothers with babies and young children due to the xenophobic attacks aimed towards foreign nationals living in South Africa which erupted in May and June of that year. Msizi Africa donated funds to feed these families for several days.
Msizi Africa has in the past also supported Umthombo, a non-profit organisation based in Durban, South Africa, by providing three meals a day for hundreds of homeless children in the city.
Founder
Lucy Caslon attended the Christ's Hospital school from 1992 to 1999 and started organising fundraising events as a student. After graduating from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2003 with a BA in History she worked in the charity sector for three years, first in the events team at Marie Curie Cancer Care and eighteen months later as corporate fundraiser with FSID.In 2006 she spent three months traveling East, Central and Southern Africa before volunteering for four months, from August to December, at the Mants'ase Children's Home. After her return to London in 2007 she founded a charity in order to raise money to continue the food improvement project she had started during her time in Lesotho. She spend her evenings and weekends to raise funds while working full-time for eighteen months as Team Secretary EMEA Hospitality for DTZ.
Besides winning 2008 the World of Difference initiative of the Vodafone Foundation she was shortlisted for the Red and Cosmopolitan magazine 'Woman of the Year' awards in the same year. In 2011 Lucy Caslon was shortlisted for the Dods and Scottish Widows 'Women in Public Life Awards' in the category "Voluntary Sector Achiever of the Year".
Lucy Caslon shares her experiences to help other prospective founders by giving talks like for the Royal Holloway Entrepreneurs or as speaker at the Institute of Fundraising's National Convention 2012 and by writing articles. She has also published video tutorials about setting up a charity with the 'KnowHow NonProfit StudyZone', which is part of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.
Caslon was selected to carry the Olympic Torch on 23 July 2012 in Sutton on Croydon Road from the junction with The Manor Way by the Wallington County Grammar School to the beginning of Acre Lane. In order to raise money for her charity she put her torch up for sale for an amount of £40000.00 which is needed to feed the 50 orphans of Mants'ase Children's Home for one year.
After serving as director at her charity from June 2007 to March 2013 Caslon returned to the Marie Curie Cancer Care organisation as Senior Corporate Account Manager but remains a trustee with Msizi Africa. In April 2015 she joined the London-based charity emerge poverty free where Caslon headed the fundraising department. From March to June 2016 she was Head of Development with Play for Change and than worked again part-time for Msizi Africa as secretary. Since its founding, she has always worked for the charity in many capacities, supported by a Board of Trustees.
Lucy Herron is since October 2016, together with her husband, also a director of the shoe manufacturing company Sloafer Limited.
Present projects
Feeding programmes in Mohale's Hoek district
Msizi Africa concentrates its efforts to provide financial and logistic support to community based feeding programmes in villages in the Mohale's Hoek district of the Kingdom of Lesotho. In 2016 Msizi Africa Lesotho catered for 108 children in the villages Majapereng, Ha Mahase and Ha Thoriso but tries to raise money using the JustGiving crowd funding platform to expand their support to further villages as a survey of 2000 homes by the Msizi Africa Lesotho team revealed severe food shortage due to the drought in the country. In early 2018 the charity supported 96 orphans in those three villages and aimed to launch another feeding programme in a fourth village. On 6. June 2018 Msizi Africa announced that it has started to support a fourth village, Ha Lekhoaba, in its feeding programme. End of 2018 the feeding programme was extended to a fifth village, Ha Sekoati, bringing the number of orphans supported by the programme to over 200.Msizi Africa also continues to support the children of the Mants'ase orphanage in Mohale's Hoek.
Previously supported projects
Mophato oa Mants'ase Children's Home
The Mants'ase Children's Home was started in 1979 as home for unwanted girls by Father Patrick M. Maekane, a retired Anglican priest and founder of the Mophato oa Mants'ase Society. After the initial buildings have been built by local women the first child was admitted in February 1980. The Home is located in Qhalasi in the Mohale's Hoek district of the Kingdom of Lesotho.The orphanage is the residential care facility of the Mophato oa Mants'ase Society whose patron is Queen 'Masenate Mohato Seeiso of Lesotho. It was one of the social projects visited by Prince Harry in 2004 during his first visit to the country. At a later visit in 2006 he launched there together with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho the Sentebale foundation which continues to assist the Society.
Msizi Africa supports the children's home by providing financial help to buy food, build housing and pay for staff salary. The orphanes lived in round houses, a typical type of building in that region, which were in a state of disrepair and Msizi Africa funded the building of a new dormitory complete with ablution blocks. Since 2014 the orphanage receives their food support from local organisations inside Lesotho.
Lucy Caslon was from 2010 until 2013 a member of the Board of Trustees of Mants'ase Children's Home and was its temporary manager for a short while in 2011.