Determined not be held back by her experience with bullying back in high school, Makhala Thekiso from Peka brushed herself off and became a motivation to empower others through her foundation.
She set up the Makhala Thekiso Girl’s Foundation (MTGF) in 2018, inspired by her personal stories that she wanted to communicate about how bullying and abuse had affected her life and how she managed to overcome such challenges. She is the executive director of the foundation.
Thekiso noticed that some people are going through the same situation but are reluctant to talk about it because of lack of courage and support to pick up and move on with their lives.
In an interview with theReporter, Thekiso said she was bullied a lot at school because of her looks, and the shape and colour of her teeth.
“Back in high school, I was also falsely accused of dating a teacher who unfortunately lost his job as a result. I was young and could not voice my denial of the accusation. As a result, that affected my life and ruined my reputation. It also affected the way people viewed and approached me, especially male fellow students,” she recalled.
Thekiso explained that the organisation focuses on thematic areas such as gender-based violence (GBV), to capacitate and empower girls and young women to take up positions of power and participate in decision-making policies that contribute to their general development and sustainability of livelihoods.
“Apart from that, it introduces them to entrepreneurship skills and interpersonal skills development because in most cases victims of bullying or abuse tend to lose their self-esteem and feel like they do not belong in society.
“Others are those who became exposed to sexual exploitation because of poor family background forcing them to be engaged in transactional sex, thus the aim is to capacitate them with opportunities and basic skills to attain a decent standard of living,” she said.
She also noted that there are people who normally acknowledge their efforts and even offer support such as the broiler business they have started, which encourages members to be business-minded to fight unemployment rate.
Apart from that, the aim was to stimulate youth to participate in agricultural projects instead of always complaining about unemployment, when there are still initiatives to fight poverty.
“We also offer other initiatives, including open discussion dialogues about their opinions on GBV, as well as government approach to issues such as policy formulation.
“At first, we only focused on women empowerment, until we realised that causes a wider gap between the males and females. We then decided to host programmes to capacitate males (boys and men) to be informed, since our culture says the man is the head of the family and is not supposed to cry,” Thekiso indicated.
Issues of GBV still need a serious approach to be addressed in the country, especially looking at statistics that rate Lesotho at 82 percent, a figure that has remained constant since 2017, she added.
The statistics give a reflection that there isn’t enough data collection on GBV in the country
In conclusion, Thekiso urged policy makers and all the relevant stakeholders to sit down and restructure the right way to approach GBV issues.
She announced one of their first biggest event to celebrate men’s international day at Hlotse, Leribe on the 19 this month as a form of acknowledging the contribution of men in our everyday life.
