03 Dec 2024

Basket of Love Centre has received P30 000 from Botswana Defence Force (BDF) during their annual charitable music concert held in Maun over the weekend.

The Maun-based centre takes care of teenage mothers and their children by protecting them from any violations and ensuring that they go back to school.

Receiving the cheque, the co-founder of the centre, Mr Nngwarae Day thanked BDF management for demonstrating love and care towards the less privileged adding that the donation would help the centre to achieve its mandate.

He said the centre is financially constrained and therefore struggled to meet some of its objective

Since its establishment in 2017, he said they had been self- financing the centre and appreciated that the donation would indeed make a huge difference in their operations as they would be able to enhance care of their beneficiaries and restore dignity among their lives.

Mr Day explained that the centre was founded by his wife, Ms Pearl Day who worked in various non-governmental organisations that cared for the less privileged persons and realised that school going girls were vulnerable to sexual related crimes which ruined their right to access education

He said her passion for youth, especially young women who dropped out of school due to teenage pregnancy motivated her to establish a centre where they could be taken care of together with their babies.

Mr Day said it was unfortunate that after delivery, the teen mothers found it difficult to return to school because they had to take care of their babies and the centre was assisting on that regard to ensure they go back to school.

He pointed out that the centre was playing a vital role of taking care of the babies while their mothers pursue their education adding that they also offer counselling to the teen mothers.

The BDF band has embarked on a country tour to stage their annual music concert aimed to raise funds and give back to the community as part of their corporate social responsibility.

The chairperson of the BDF charity concert, Colonel Ndiko Setaelo said the purpose of the concert was to bring the band to the people through entertainment and also touch lives of those in need. He appreciated that since its inception, the event had supported many charitable organisations in the country.

“So far we have touched lives in Orapa, Letlhakane, Francistown, Palapye and Selebi-Phikwe and now we are in Maun where we invested P30 000 to Basket of Love Centre. From here we are heading to Ghanzi,” he added.

Meanwhile the concert organisers once again gave local artistes a platform to spice the event by showcasing their brilliant indigenous talents. Among them were the likes of the legendary Molefi “Stigger” Monaga who mesmerised the audience with his acoustic guitar. Ends