Sentebale is the first charity Prince Harry ever founded. He was only 21 years old when he and Prince Seeiso started it, and in nearly 20 years, Sentebale has done a lot of great work in Lesotho. It was started as a way to support children born with HIV. Over the years, Sentebale’s focus has expanded to more general support for the children of Lesotho, plus working on issues that face Lesotho across the board. Harry just visited Lesotho for the first time in like four or five years (the pandemic, remember) and it looks like he’s decided that Sentebale needs to adapt even more. As such, he’s bringing in some new people. This, of course, is being reported by Richard Eden at the Daily Mail as some kind of “people are always quitting on the Sussexes!”
Prince Harry was in ebullient form at an art gallery party in New York last week to celebrate the launch of a fundraising exhibition for his African children’s charity Sentebale. Behind the scenes, there have, I hear, been major changes going on at the organisation he co-founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in 2006.
This week, Richard Miller quit as chief executive of Sentabale after five years in the role. His departure follows that of Baroness Chalker, the overseas development minister, who stepped down as a director last month.
It was the latest blow for the Duke of Sussex’s organisation, which lost advertising king Johnny Hornby last year. He stood down after 11 years as a trustee, five of which he spent as chairman. Last month, The Mail on Sunday disclosed that Andrew Tucker, whom Harry affectionately calls ‘Tucks’, had stepped down from his senior position at Sentebale after almost a decade.
In another sign of Harry and his wife, Meghan, cutting links with Britain, Miller will be the last London-based chief executive of Sentebale, which means ‘forget me not’ in Sesotho. The charity says Miller, 62, will be replaced by an interim executive director, Carmel Gaillard. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, she has been asked to deliver a ‘strategic transformation’ of the charity.
It has evolved from supporting children and young people affected by HIV/AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana to addressing broader issues of ‘youth health, wealth inequity and climate resilience’.
‘This shift reflects our continued commitment to being guided by voices from within the region we serve,’ say Princes Harry and Seeiso in a joint statement. ‘We sincerely thank Richard for his pivotal role in steering our organisation toward this important evolution.’
Miller says: ‘It is the logical next step for Sentebale, and the time is right for this shift to local leadership. Carmel is an incredible asset to position Sentebale further as a leader in the region.’
What it sounds like is that Harry is really withdrawing as much as he can from the UK, and he no longer wants so many British folks involved with Sentebale. If the switch to Carmel Gaillard is any indication, Harry probably wants executives and board members who are actually from Lesotho or South Africa or the broader region. My guess is that this is all part of a shift where Sentebale will not even have an office in England – perhaps it will be registered as a charity in the US. Anyway, the real story is the evolution of a small, local charity in Lesotho growing into an internationally-recognized charity with a much broader agenda.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red, Instagram.
