Care and Cardboard 📦💡
The Physiotherapy and Outreach Program Lesotho (POP Lesotho) is a nonprofit company registered in Lesotho in 2022. It aims to provide children with disabilities in Lesotho with the support and opportunities they need to help them fulfil their potential.
It achieves this by capacity building with caregivers in the community; the provision of assistive equipment, supporting inclusive education and enabling environments. The project is community-based, and its outreach program operates across three districts, Maseru, Leribe and Butha-Buthe, with a particular focus on children with cerebral palsy (CP). Most of the children POP Lesotho works with in the community have a high level of disability and cannot sit or stand without support or mobilise without a wheelchair.
Using a grant from the British High Commission, POP built an Assistive Technology Centre (ATC) at Abia High School in February 2023. Here, it makes assistive devices out of recycled cardboard, a skill called Appropriate Paper-based Technology (APT), and repairs and recycles wheelchairs. In the last two years, POP has produced and delivered over 150 APT devices, repaired and recycled dozens of wheelchairs and purchased seventy-five appropriate, robust wheelchairs using donations from friends in Wales. As well as improving quality of life at home, many of these assistive devices have been used to help children access education. This year, we look toward building a second ATC at the Technology College in Hlotse in partnership with Catholic Comprehensive Community College. This workshop will serve children in Leribe with assistive devices, as up to now, all equipment in Leribe has been transported from the workshop at Abia High School.
A newly qualified graduate occupational therapist (OT) was appointed in March. She will help cover the outreach program in Maseru District and the school’s program at Ha Seleso and Abia High School. Her skills are a great asset which complement POP’s skills base. Since February, we have had two soldiers on placement from the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) Physiotherapy Department to assist with APT production, wheelchair repairs and physiotherapy with the children. The soldiers get training, POP gets staff, and the children have improved access to physiotherapy, so it’s a win-win situation for everyone and helps sustain a physiotherapy skills base in Lesotho.
We also work closely with parent facilitators from Malamulele Onward who support children with CP in the community. With their assistance over the last few years, we have empowered hundreds of children and their caregivers with physiotherapy skills and health care knowledge across Maseru, Leribe and Butha Buthe. We have now received funding to purchase a suitable 4×4 to reach out even further and go to the Highlands and reach children in communities that have very little opportunity to access health care.
With the help of Dr Jemma Wright, POP has used its APT database to develop an abstract for a research study. The abstract is titled “The Physiotherapy and Outreach Program Lesotho: Creating Assistive Equipment in a Low-Resource Setting”. This was presented South African Child Health Priorities Association Virtual Conference in November 2024 and was well received with lots of positive comments, engaging other interested parties in this work.
In March 2025, it was presented at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health conference in Glasgow. This is a prestigious paediatric research conference and an opportunity to raise the profile of the APT work POP is doing in Lesotho, as well as to monitor and evaluate it. The conference was well attended, and the presentation was made by a fellow physiotherapist who visited POP in September 2023. The RCPCH were so impressed by the presentation that they are now looking to see if they can introduce APT to Nigeria. The poster for the abstract presented in Glasgow is shown below.
Now, with the building of a second workshop in Leribe, an opportunity to develop this abstract and collect more data presents itself. Data and information can be used to show policymakers the need for resources and how to plan long-term strategies. Without data, these children remain invisible, so the collection and presentation of credible data is very important for raising awareness with the government and affecting long-term strategies.
To support data collection and awareness raising, mums making up an informal CP group in Leribe have been encouraged by POP to register as a group to bring cohesiveness, direction and political influence using its two hundred members. This group can provide information to local social workers and health officials and raise greater awareness of CP and the health and social issues that CP caregivers face within Lesotho. The second half of 2025 looks very interesting for POP Lesotho, and we look forward to continuing to make a very positive impact on the lives of children with disabilities in Lesotho. Please visit our website for more information: poplesotho.org
LDF Soldiers on placement at the workshop
The picture above explains POP’s Process of Creating Assertive Equipment in a Low Resource Setting
