A year of secondary school
School fees, books, a uniform, and warm meals for one whole school year at a school we know and trust. This usually costs £350-£900 for one child, depending on the country and the school.
Schools & partners
The Brother Sylvester Foundation
Helping children learn and helping teachers grow.
The Brother Sylvester Foundation is the giving side of Brother Sylvester. We help young people get to school, and we help their teachers learn and grow, across the UK, Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana, and the Caribbean. We are a charity, and we are signing up properly with the Charity Commission right now.
Charity registration is in progress · Every January we share a friendly report on what your kindness made happen
What your kindness pays for
A year of college or university
Fees and a little money to live on for one school year at a college or university we partner with. This usually costs £1,200-£4,000, depending on the course and the country.
Helping a teacher get even better
Training for a working teacher, plus the books and travel they need to take part. When a teacher grows, every child in their class grows too. This usually costs £500-£2,500 for one teacher.
Scholarships with a name
If you give £5,000 or more in a year, you may name a scholarship after someone special to you. With your permission, we share the name on our impact page, and it is tied to one student for the school year. It is a lovely way to keep a name alive through a child's learning.
The Marilyn Scholarship
A scholarship that is always here, in loving memory of Marilyn Leader, Sylvester's wife for fifty years and a teacher all her life. Each year it goes to a young woman studying education, teaching, or work that helps others, in one of the countries we partner with.
It is paid for from our donations pool at college level, and it carries on every single year, no matter what. Marilyn's name will keep helping students learn for a long time to come.
How we look after your gift
- Your gift is kept safe and separate. Every donation goes straight into the Foundation's own bank account, kept apart from the shop and the courses.
- Almost all of it reaches the children. We only ever keep up to 5% to keep things running, so 95% of every gift goes to the schools and the students.
- We give to schools, not to single people. The money goes school to school, and the schools we trust make sure it reaches the right children where they live.
- The schools tell us how it is going. Each term, every partner school shares how the students are doing, and an independent person checks the books once we reach a certain size.
- One friendly report each year. Every January we publish a report telling you what your kindness did over the past year.
- Keeping children safe comes first. We follow our safeguarding policy. We never meet students one to one, and we never share anything that names or pictures a child without permission.
Want to see exactly how it works? Read our Theory of Change — it shows how a gift turns into real, lasting good.
Where we work
Right now we work hand in hand with schools in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, and the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. As we make new friends across the Caribbean, we will grow into more places too.
Saint Kitts and Nevis is where Sylvester Leader was born, and it is where it all began.
The Marilyn Leader Educator Programme
Will you help a child learn?
A gift today, once or every month, sends a child to school next year and helps a teacher grow. Every little bit truly helps, and we would love to hear from you.