A Message from Our Founder

In 2008, my life was redefined by a single word: Leukaemia. My daughter was only 20 months old when we began a three-year journey of treatment that took us across the border from Lesotho to Bloemfontein. It was during those long days in hospital waiting rooms that my eyes were opened—not just to the pain of the disease, but to the devastating silence surrounding it in our home country.

I met many other Basotho parents in South Africa, and we all shared the same heartbreaking reality. Back home in Lesotho, there was no information, no local support, and a heavy cloud of stigma. I watched families crumble under the financial strain of cross-border travel. I saw fathers walk away and relatives pull back because they didn't understand what cancer was—often fearing it was a curse rather than a medical condition.

I realized then that while the medicine treats the child, it is the community that saves the family.

When my daughter was finally declared cancer-free in 2019, I knew I couldn't simply walk away. I had witnessed too many families choose to stop treatment because they couldn't afford the taxi fare to Maseru, or because they felt abandoned by their communities.

The Childhood Cancer Organisation (CCO) was born from a promise I made to those families. We began as a small collective of parents standing by one another, replacing fear with education and isolation with a shared "warrior" spirit.

Today, with the official support of the Government of Lesotho`s Ministry of Health, we are no longer just a group of parents—we are a national lifeline. We provide the transport, the meals, the education, and the emotional sanctuary that I wish had existed when I first started this journey.

To every parent currently walking this path: You are not unlucky. You are not cursed. You are the parent of a warrior, and at CCO, we will make sure you never have to fight this battle alone.

With hope and resilience,

Mampho Tsupane

Executive Founder

Childhood Cancer Organisation

"I know the weight of the diagnosis, because I carried it."

— Mampho Tsupane