Prince Harry: My Mother Would Be Proud

Prince Harry, currently in the African nation of Lesotho undertaking charity work, has said that his mother would be proud of the work he is doing to revamp a school for disabled children.

The 23-year-old prince is in Lesotho with 26 comrades from the Household Cavalry for the next three weeks, building wheelchair ramps, a new septic tank unit and dining hall at the Thuso e Tla Tsoa Kae Community School.

“I’m out here because I want to be – it’s where I have to be,” said Harry. “I first came out during my gap year and it was love at first sight. It is a wonderful country, in spite of its issues.”

Harry is assisting with projects run by Sentebale, the charity the prince set up in his mother’s memory with Prince Sessio of Lesotho.

“It would be wrong for a patron of a charity to not get involved,” he said. “All the kids are mentally and physically disabled. To expect them to walk up steps like these is madness.”

The new Thuso Community Centre, currently home to a total of 43 children with disabilities, will eventually house up to 80 youngsters, and Sentebale director Harper Brown said that the aim is to turn the town into the country’s teaching and rehabilitation centre for disabled children, many of whom have found themselves orphaned by the AIDS pandemic.

“Everything here is just so positive and fantastic,” said Prince Harry. “This is the only school for mentally handicapped children within Lesotho and once the project is finished, we hope to make another in the centre and one in the south.”