Children's Rights
Training helps communities understand the rights of children and the responsibility adults have to protect them.
Babelegi Mmogo Helps Communities Protect Children Together
At Lorato House, we believe that protecting children is a shared responsibility. Babelegi Mmogo embodies the principle that it takes a village to raise a child by mobilising families, community leaders, and local organisations to work together for the safety and wellbeing of every child in Botswana.
Programme Overview
Child Protection Starts with Informed Communities
Babelegi Mmogo takes its name from the widely practised act across Africa of carrying a child on one's back, a practice that keeps the child secure, deepens bonding, and often soothes them to sleep.
Through preventive and early intervention services, Babelegi Mmogo strengthens families, reduces vulnerability, and responds to crises with compassion. The programme provides parenting support, practical skills development, and community education on child rights and the Children's Act, helping caregivers build stable, nurturing homes.
Read the Children's Act (PDF)Babelegi Mmogo also delivers emergency child protection through immediate safeguarding and trauma-informed intake, coordinates referral pathways for case management, and offers a specialised adolescent girls support programme focused on counselling, parental engagement, and family strengthening for girls at risk of abuse, exploitation, or teenage pregnancy.
By bringing families, communities, and partners together, Babelegi Mmogo creates a united network of protection around children: a true village of care, advocacy, and shared responsibility.
Community-based child-protection training
Education on children’s rights and safeguarding
Support for families, caregivers, and local leaders
Training
What Communities Learn
The programme gives people clear, practical guidance for recognising risk, responding responsibly, and helping children grow in safer environments.
Safeguarding Awareness
Participants learn how to recognise concerns, respond carefully, and support safer environments for children.
Caregiver Responsibility
Families and caregivers receive guidance that strengthens daily care, protection, and support for children.
Community Partnership
Babelegi Mmogo works through local relationships so child protection is understood and practiced across the community.
Expanding in 2026
Babelegi Mmogo: Safe Communities For All
As of 2026, the Babelegi Mmogo (BBM) program, that originally began in Maun, has since been expanded into communities across the Okavango District, including Shakawe and Gumare among others, under the theme: Babelegi Mmogo: Safe Communities For All – Engaging Youth In Preventing Abuse and Exploitation, thus undertaking a holistic, community-centered approach.
Communities in these districts grapple with notable challenges affecting children and young people, among them teenage pregnancy, abuse, exploitation, social stigma, school disengagement and limited access to support.
The program aims to equip key groups and community stakeholders, including youth and children, local leadership, women’s groups, educators, faith-based organisations, and community leaders with the knowledge and tools to recognise and adequately respond to abuse.
According to statistics from the Okavango District Health Management Team, teenage pregnancies made up 20% of recorded pregnancies in the district in the first quarter of 2024 and 21.2% in the second quarter.
The program is being delivered in partnership with the Ministry of Child Welfare and Basic Education and the Okavango District Council Social Welfare.
Support Child Protection in the Community
Your support helps Babelegi Mmogo bring families, communities, and partners together to create a united network of protection around children: a true village of care, advocacy, and shared responsibility.