LENASO has been effectively engaged in community mobilization to promote community participation, involvement to enhance informed decision making, and ownership. LENASO conducts public gatherings, community dialogues, focus group discussions, campaigns, conferences, Family Health Days, child health days, Universal Health Coverage Days and other community out-reach events to mobilize and advocate for referral and linkages to essential services including nutritional assessment, cervical cancer screening and COVID-19 vaccination. LENASO further facilitates tracking of High Viral load, Cancer and positive sputum clients to access EAC and clinical management once results are available. Through the support of PUSH project, 80 CBO Community Health Care Workers are trained to establish and implement innovative interventions in HIV prevention that includes condom promotion, OVC care, Psychosocial support, HIV treatment literacy, retention in HIV care, impact mitigation, GBV, Community mobilization for uptake of services, referrals and linkages to health service providers, life skills, nutrition and food security and economic empowerment to further cascade to community members. The 80 support groups in the districts of Thaba-tseka, Mafeteng, Maseru and Mohale’s Hoek currently have been supported to start the income generating projects. LENASO further supports girls with sanitary towels as the social responsibility. LENASO runs its programs in line with the national strategic plan and other national policy document. LENASO is involved in highly level national strategic planning and Country Operational Plans for donors. LENASO has been a member of SRHR stakeholders’ committee and participated effectively on trainings for the parliamentarians, CSOs and other stakeholders. LENASO participates in the development of county operational plans for PEPFAR supported programs representing the CSOs.LENASO has groups of AGYW, support groups and Community ART groups in the 10 districts of Lesotho. These are targeted with income generating and financial literacy training annually provided there are allowing funds. LENASO normally invite the experts from different development departments like Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and Ministry of Forestry where each support group is trained on Income generating activity (IGA) they prefer which is relevant to their context. They are further linked to the agencies that will assist in machinery training and connect them with the market. This has been evident in some support groups in the districts of Butha-Buthe where they do bee-keeping and produce honey, in Leribe where they produce dried fruits and also grow trees for selling. LENASO has further extended the initiative to commercial food production where support groups are to be trained and supported to grow cash crops that will be immediately absorbed by the market through help of the office. This is still in the pipeline and already with great buy-in.
In regard to social responsibility initiatives beyond health, LENASO has for the past years outdone itself where during the celebration of its annual LENASO Day, communities in the nearby areas are gifted with essentials like food, agriculture equipment and clothing to appreciate their support and response as clients. This has grown bigger in recent years with the collaboration of Universal Health Day celebration where the scale of giving back to the communities has gone higher. Here LENASO seeks sponsorships from private sectors and individual who mostly reach out.