When Prince Harry said he wanted to do something in his sabbatical year to make his mother proud, someone suggested spending time at Lesotho. “I was like, where is the devil?” Harry remembers years later in the African country without coastal where approximately a quarter of the population is HIV positive. It was finally decided that the 19 -year -old prince would go there for two months in 2004 and will be organized by the Prince of the country Seeiso. It was a visit that changed his life forever.
“Something in me said that you cannot, you cannot experience what you have experienced, in the beauty of where you have gone and yet the hideous of what really attacks these people and what attacks the young generation without really giving something back,” said the prince in a 2016 documentary on his decision to launch Sentebale in 2006 with Prince Seeiso to help the vulnerable young people Lesotho’s HIV Epidem.
Prince Harry looks at a fishing he has just planted at the home of the children of Mantes’as during a visit in 2004 at Lesotho.
The name they chose means “forget me” in SSOTHO, the official language of Lesotho, and was in homage to their late mother.
Harry has returned several times to the country, bringing the difficulties of the children of Lesotho to the attention of the media in the world and the rich donors. The Sentebale Polo Cup, launched in 2010, has become their basic annual fundraising event and saw Prince Harry compete with the friend and professional Polo Nacho Figueras to raise more than $ 13 million.
Prince Harry is in competition during the Royal Salute Polo Challenge benefiting in Sentebale in Wellington, Florida, in 2024.
In 2015, Sentebale opened a new building with rooms named after Princess Diana and the Nounou of the beloved childhood of William and Harry, Olga Powell. The prince’s link with children supported by Sentebale was sincere and lasting. An orphan with which he concluded a particular report during his visit in 2004, Mutsu Potsane, was invited to the land of the Château de Windsor for the wedding of Harry and Meghan in 2018.
Spare
It was unequivocal that Harry took Sentebale with him when he left royal life. It is this charitable organization that the prince chose to receive his share of 50% of the commemorative fund of Diana, princess of Wales when Sussex Royal ceased to operate. He also gave $ 1.5 million from the product of his memories Spare at Sentebale. Since 2006, the charity had prospered to become everything that defines the prince; Honoring his mother’s memory, his passion to help the most needy and her love for Africa.
So when the news announced this week that Prince Harry, with Prince Seeiso, had resigned from his role as a boss, it seemed at the beginning as he could not. Surely they are Sentebale, it seemed. But while in the mind, it can be true, legally, this is of course not the case.
While the information has been filtered, it has become clear that a monumental quarrel had taken place between the founders and the administrators of Sentebale on one side, and the chairman of the board of directors, Dr. Sophie Chandauka, and his supporters on the other. The striking statements were published by the two parties.
The princes and administrators said that their decisions had come after Dr. Chandauka had been invited to resign and that she had responded by intensifying legal action against the charitable organization. The princes said that they were “in shock” and “the broken heart” that they therefore had to carry out “unthinkable” resignations.
Dr. Chandauka did not retain his criticism, some of whom seemed directly pointed out towards Prince Harry. “There are people in this world who behave as if they were above the law and mistreat people, then play the victim card and use the press even that they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct,” she said in a statement. She said that she had denounced “abuse of power, intimidation, harassment, misogyny, misogymoir” within the organization. This was refused by a former administrator.
Prince Harry visited Lesotho in 2024 as part of his work with Sentebale.
So, more than 20 years after its conception, where does it leave Sentebale? A series of modifications were made earlier this week Sentebale The leadership team as a charity has published a statement indicating that it did not need its founders or customers to continue their work. “While trustee are essential for governance and regulations, and customers – in particular the founders – are an honor to have, it is people on the ground that advances work, whatever happens,” said the press release. Dr. Chanduaka said that she had reported the administrators to the Beautiful Organization Commission – the government department which acts as a regulator of charities in England and Wales – who said he was aware of the concerns.
The charitable organization now has the great challenge to try to flourish without any of its royal patrons and following the public fury that followed. How it is prices will be monitored closely.
For Harry, it is a devastating blow that cuts him off more from the heritage he started as a royal of work. When he fell in 2020, he had to abandon his honorary military affiliations and many of his charity patronages. Sentebale was one of the few things he could continue with.
However, what can not in any doubt are Harry’s continuous commitment to young people whom he decided for the first time to help all these years ago. Shortly before leaving royal life, in January 2020, he gave a poignant speech to Sentebale supporters in London where he said: “My work and my commitment for this charity work, which I founded 14 years ago now, will never vacillate.”
How things take place with the future of Sentebale could still have more twists and turns. But if there are no roads for him, then the prince is no stranger to forge a new path.
City and country The editor -in -chief Victoria Murphy has reported on the British royal family since 2010. She interviewed Prince Harry and traveled the world covering several royal tours. It contributes frequent to Good Morning America. Victoria the author City and country Book the queen: a life in pictures,, Released in 2021.
