Prince Harry to expand charity

Prince Harry photographed here with one of the many
orphan-recipients of Santebale.

Prince Harry plans to expand his African charity Sentabale to five countries and quadruple its income to 8 million pounds annually, reveals Sentabala CEO Cathy Ferrier in an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph. Despite Prince Harry's current assignment in Afghanistan, where he serves as an Apache helicopter pilot, Ferrier reveals that the charity's founder "is so hands on that he emails her from Camp Bastion once a fortnight to keep up with developments."


“He keeps in email contact from Afghanistan,” she explains. “If there are any developments I make sure he is aware of them, so if we need his sign-off or need to make sure he is supportive of something I will contact him. I probably email him in Afghanistan every other week.”

Prince Harry is very interested to expand the Sentabale's reach out to other south African countries.

"Sentebale has been beset by controversy in the past, having been criticised for high start-up costs and spending too much on administration and not enough on direct help for the poor, and Prince Harry has described its progress as a 'roller-coaster' since it began in 2006," writes The Telegraph. However, Ferrier revealed that the charity is now out of limbo and has already spread awareness and attracted numerous donors. This year, the charity will launch its own garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Sentebale is Prince Harry's response to the abject poverty and the sufferings endured by children in Lesotho, one of the country's poorest. Since its founding, Sentebale has already helped orphans, many of them are HIV-Infected

“We have researched nine other countries in southern Africa which have similar problems to Lesotho, with a high number of orphans and high HIV infection rates, and we have a short-list of four countries,” Ferrier revealed.

“We still have an absolute commitment to doing all we can in Lesotho, but we want to take the programme to other countries because there is huge unmet need.”

Santebale is the African term for "forget-me-not."