Lesotho: Free education gives children orphaned by HIV/AIDS a chance for a better life

Starting in the year 2000, free primary education has been rolled out each year in Lesotho and it is starting to revolutionize the country’s youth. At school, children are taught life skills and HIV/AIDS education and are given two meals a day through the World Food Programme’s school-feeding programme. At the Katlehong primary school, in Thaba Tseka, the schoolyard is jam-packed with over 150 chattering children, girls and boys, small and big. All of them had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. Many of the children are heading households themselves.