A Bronx senior is paying school fees for ten kids in Accra
Max Owobu's Yenko Foundation puts a price on one child's school year: $1,000.
Some nonprofits start with a market analysis. Yenko Foundation started with a summer in Ghana and a lot of kids who should have been in school.
Max Owobu, an 18-year-old from the Bronx and a high school senior, began spending summers in Ghana in 2023. He kept noticing children his own age working. “I was seeing kids my age working with their family, running stores, running markets, just trying to get any type of money instead of being in school,” he told Inside Philanthropy, as quoted by Hoodline. He and his brother Alexander, who was involved before the project had a name, set out to change that for a few of them.
The result is Yenko Foundation, a 501(c)(3) that covers tuition, uniforms, transportation, meals and supplies for children in Ghana. The foundation’s math is refreshingly legible. It lists $300 a year as average tuition per child, $10 for a school uniform and $2 a day for transportation, and says $1,000 supports one child for a full year. For comparison, it notes that unskilled workers earn about $65 a month on average.
According to Hoodline, the foundation has raised about $17,000 and is sponsoring 10 children in kindergarten through fifth grade for the 2025 to 2026 school year. They attend Calvary Methodist School in Accra. Owobu told Inside Philanthropy that students are identified through school administrators and family friends. In one case the foundation moved a boy named Matthew to Calvary Methodist and funded his education. “As soon as we could, we took him out of that school, funded his education and sent him to Calvary Methodist,” Owobu said.
The plan is to take on 10 to 15 children and stay with them through primary school, which matters more than it sounds. Scholarships that vanish after one year help no one. The foundation says it was formalized with a family friend based in Ghana. Owobu has also said he hopes to expand to hospitals and orphanages.
It is a small operation with a transparent cost structure and a founder who has seen the problem in person. That is a good formula for a first act.
The foundation lists an Instagram account, @yenkofoundation, as its contact point.
