06 Dec 2020

As part of honoring the late former Debswana managing director, Mr Albert Milton, his wife Albertinah embarked on a cycling challenge to continue his legacy of community service.

Ms Milton partnered with Majwe Mining to come up with a cycling challenge that would help raise funds towards empowering children. 

When her husband died in 2019 he was 57 years old and Ms Milton noted that the number 570 was inspired from his husband’s age at the time of his death. 

She said she then added a zero digit to make it 570, hence the 570km cycling challenge now termed Majwe-Albert Milton (AM570km)

Majwe-AM570km Cycle challenge was intended to, among others, empower youth in respect to gender-based equity and gender based violence within Jwaneng zone.  However, Mrs Milton noted that the beneficiaries would not only be around Jwaneng.

“We want to empower the boy and girl child and we are not going to be focused around Jwaneng when we do it next year,” stated Mrs Milton adding that they would take the initiative across the country. The focus this year was in Jwaneng since her husband was connected to the town’s community where he spent five years as the mine’s general manager.

‘MmaMilton’ as she is affectionately known in the cycling community found nothing more fulfilling than to give back to the community. 

She said her husband was fond of giving as well. Theirs was a connection through charity work, since both were passionate about giving back to the community.

She indicated that their rides with her husband were significant in their quest to raise funds for charity. Therefore, she said the 570km was also a way of getting together everyone who was close to him especially cyclists, to honor his legacy and memory.

When they started their charity work, Ms Milton said they did the 400km challenge to raise funds for Lotsane Senior Secondary School, where she was a teacher at some point. Ms Milton said she partnered with Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (MVA) and British Council’s Connecting Classrooms where pupils from Botswana were taken to the United Kingdom and those from the United Kingdom also came to Botswana.

She said they raised funds for the initiative through the 400km charity ride from Gaborone and back. Her experiences on charity work went a long way and those around her were aware of her passion to reach out and assist where she could. 

She noted that she sometimes partnered with other stakeholders, and indicated that she particularly focused on education.

“Helping one person can make a huge difference in the life of that individual,” stated Ms Milton.

Her generosity and good heart also extended to her neighbours, which she showed during the lockdowns when she reached out to them. But, she wished the nation could join in especially in reaching out where education was concerned.

She appealed to everyone capablen to particularly assist young children where education was concerned, even extend in donating brick blocks to help government.  

To the boys and girls, Ms Milton appealed to them to take care of each other protect each other.  She said if such ideals were instilled in them, there will not be any gender based violence. Ends