37,000
Partner Schools
In 2022, with your generous help we were proud to award scholarships to 151 girls. Ninety of these are South Sudanese refugees and sixty one are Ugandan. To provide the girls with learning opportunities and close monitoring and mentorship, we continued the Special Study Program instituted in 2020 — hiring traveling tutors, distributing textbooks, solar lamps, battery-operated radios, and supplying much needed personal items. Please read our current annual report for more information:
Partner Schools
Partner Schools
Partner Schools
Partner Schools
Over 17 years working in the region
Over 1400 scholarships granted
Partner Schools
Partner Schools
Partner Schools
Partner Schools
Here is the story of 15 year old Leticia: In 2022, the Wai Foundation awarded scholarships to 151 girls to attend six secondary schools in northern Uganda. Ninety of these are South Sudanese refugees and sixtyone are Ugandan.
Leticia grew up with her grandmother in a refugee settlement in Northern Uganda. Despite the numerous challenges surrounding her family. She knew she had great potential and had the determination to succeed. Leticia has become an outstanding student at St Andrew College in Moyo. At the age of 15 Years in the Senior two class, Leticia is not only a role model for other students in academics but also in leadership roles. She is a student leader and a leader of the Red Cross Society at her school. She is a source of great inspiration, admiration, and encouragement to many girls and young people who share in her life!
$50 can teach a child to read and write for a year.
The mission of the Dunstan Wai Memorial Charitable Foundation is to empower African girls through education. To that end, the Foundation seeks to improve the lives and futures of South Sudanese and Ugandan girls and young women by financing their secondary- and tertiary-level schooling.
The Wai Foundation was created in 2005 to honor the memory of Dunstan Wai, a former World Bank staff member originally from Kajo Keji County, South Sudan. Because Dunstan recognized that lifting girls out of poverty required them to have increased access to education, the Wai scholarship program was established and flourished both in his birthplace in South Sudan and in northern Uganda where he had been a refugee. Over its 17-year history, the Foundation has financed more than 1300 cumulative annual secondary-school scholarships, allowing some 225 girls to graduate.
In 2010, the Foundation expanded its activities by financing selected graduates of secondary schools to pursue tertiary-level studies in South Sudanese and Ugandan institutions of their choice. Currently, students are studying to become nurses, midwives, teachers, lab technicians, nutritionists, and project managers. So far, 24 young women have graduated, receiving either a certificate or a higher-level diploma.
The Foundation’s activities in South Sudan were brought to a sudden halt in 2017 when ethnic violence caused nearly everyone, including our Wai scholars, to flee to refugee camps in northern Uganda. Remarkably, all of the girls were located and joined the Wai Ugandan scholars in six Ugandan boarding schools. Then in 2020, the Foundation’s program was again disrupted when the COVID-19 epidemic closed the Ugandan schools. In order to keep our scholars learning and motivated, The Wai Foundation employed local tutors and supplied books as well as solar-powered reading lamps and radios to enable students to participate in on-line learning. Schools in Uganda reopened in 2022 and the Foundation is now financing both new students entering secondary school for the first time as well as those returning scholars who need to make up for the schooling they missed during the pandemic. Our goal for 2022 is to continue supporting 140 girls in secondary school and 20 girls in post-secondary schools.
The scholarship program is administered by two remarkable nuns. Sister Lily Akedi of the Comboni Missionary Sisters manages the tertiary program from Juba, South Sudan. Sister Florence Oryema of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus administers the secondary-school program in northern Uganda from Moyo, Uganda. Their contributions and others’ have allowed the Foundation to keep the annual costs of administering its program to less than 15% of total outlays.
The Wai Foundation is supported generously by more than 150 contributors, many of whom are staff at the World Bank Group, as well as Bank retirees who were former colleagues of Dunstan Wai. An increasing number of donors are people from outside the Bank who wish to support the Foundation’s focus on women’s education, conflict resolution and economic development. It is governed by a Board of ten Directors of varying backgrounds, each with a passion for carrying out the Foundation’s mission.
The Dunstan Wai Memorial Charitable Foundation has managed to navigate the twin tragedies of violent conflict in South Sudan and the global COVID-19 pandemic to continue to support the educational dreams and promise of girls and young women in one of the least developed places on earth.
