The Dunstan Wai Foundation

After two long years, schools in Uganda have reopened! We're hopeful that returning to school will ease the many burdens imposed on our scholarship recipients during the height of COVID.

The Board of the Dunstan Wai Memorial Charitable Foundation wishes to express its great sorrow at the passing of our founder and leader for 15 years, Kim Jaycox.

Kim was the inspiration and the moving force behind the creation of the Wai Foundation in 2005, honoring the memory and wishes of his friend and World Bank colleague, Dunstan Wai. Dunstan’s great wish was to promote the education and promise of girls in South Sudan. Kim devoted himself to building the Foundation—setting its goals, promoting its vision, gaining finance support, persuading us to join the Board and establishing local partners the Comboni Sisters in South Sudan and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Uganda.

Through his stewardship and persistence the Foundation has flourished and has today supported more than 1300 young women with scholarships and mentoring.

Kim‘s passion for the Foundation was evident in the way in which he managed the Board with focus, grace and good humor. But his commitment was most visible when he visited the students in Kajo Keji, South Sudan and in Northern Uganda. His empathy and pride in their effort was remarkable. He inspired the girls and they inspired him.

As Sister Lily Akedi expressed in the first verse of the poem she wrote to Kim in December 2020:

He stands out in stature
He is a man of character
Humility, integrity, self-giving his ingredients
Who could match him?
That is our Hero.

Kim is our Hero, too. We have been blessed in serving with him, honored to have worked together for a cause that has no equal and grateful for having Kim as our guide and our friend.

--The Dunstan Wai Memorial Charitable Foundation Board of Directors

Co-founder and former Board Chair Kim Jaycox passed away on Monday March 1, 2021. We will miss his leadership, wisdom, innovative approaches, and passion for Africa and girls' education.

EDWARD JAYCOX Obituary - (1938 - 2021) - Washington, NY - The Washington Post View EDWARD JAYCOX's obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.

Please take a look at the 2020 Wai Foundation Annual Report athttp://www.dwmcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2020-Wai-Foundation-Annual-Report.pdf

The Wai Foundation is working hard to keep our scholarship recipients motivated to continue learning and avoid early pregnancies. www.dwmcf.org

A thank you from our scholarship recipients. www.dwmcf.org

The supplies have arrived and are being distributed in the refugee camps. Textbooks, solar lamps for studying at night, and radio powered radios to listen to government broadcast lessons. Our tutors are beginning their rounds, working with the scholarship recipients in small groups by location and grade level. The amazing Sister Florence (shown) has put all of this in place in an amazingly short time! Www.dwmcf.org

Schools are closed in Uganda and times are really tough. Most of our scholarship recipients are living in refugee camps. The Wai Foundation is supplying traveling tutors, textbooks, solar lamps, and radios to listen to government broadcast lessons. Please help us with this effort! www.dwmcf.org

Pandemic makes learning even harder for Uganda's refugee children A new report out from UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, says that at the global height of the pandemic, nearly half a billion children could not access remote learning during lockdowns. Distance education is even harder for hundreds of thousands of children living in dire conditions, s...

There has been a changing of the guard at the Dunstan Wai Memorial Charitable Foundation! After 15 years as the Chair of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, Edward (Kim) Jaycox, a co-founder of the Wai Foundation, conveyed his wish to step down from his position. As a consequence, at its meeting on July 16, 2020, the Board accepted Kim’s decision with high praise for his capable leadership and strong commitment to the academic development of African girls and young women. The members then unanimously voted to replace Kim with his daughter and Board member, Tamara Jaycox Kessler.

During Kim's time as chair, The Wai Foundation has grown and thrived despite the civil unrest in South Sudan that forced most of its programing to relocate to northern Uganda. The Foundation’s first scholarships in 2006 went to just 15 South Sudanese girls. As of 2019, the Foundation has awarded over 1,100 secondary-school scholarships, financed some 450 girls through to graduation, and funded the tertiary-level schooling of thirty-four young women.

At the July 16 Wai Foundation’s Board meeting, Tamara expressed her great pleasure at having been selected as Board chair. “It’s so exciting to follow in my father’s shoes. I’m so pleased to have the opportunity to work towards ensuring that African girls receive an education.” Tamara joined the Foundation’s Board on July 1, 2019. She recently retired from a 30-year career in the federal government, during which she served as a federal prosecutor, internal affairs expert, and civil rights lawyer and policy maker. As a member of the Senior Executive Service, she advised the Secretary of Homeland Security on civil rights matters, and led both the Criminal Section and the Federal Coordination and Compliance Section in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, and the proud mother of twin girls.

“I’m so grateful to have someone as competent and dedicated as Tamara to follow me as Chair,” Kim said. “She brings the kind of energy and smarts that will assure a strong future for the Wai Foundation.”

The Dunstan Wai Memorial Charitable Foundation supports the vitally-needed education of girls and young women from South Sudan and northern Uganda by providing them with full scholarships to their local secondary and tertiary schools. As of 2019, its fourteenth year of operation, The Wai Foundation has awarded 1,100 secondary-school scholarships, financed some 450 girls through to graduation, and sponsored the tertiary-level schooling of 34 young women.

Founded in 2005 to honor the memory of Dr. Dunstan Wai, an African scholar and former World Bank staff member, funding for the Foundation’s scholarship program comes from the generosity of individuals committed to supporting girls’ education, many of whom are current or former staff of the World Bank. The Wai Foundation’s operations for the first ten years largely were situated in Kajo Keji County, South Sudan, the site of Dr. Wai’s birth. That changed dramatically in 2016 when internal fighting in South Sudan caused almost the entire population of Kajo Keji to flee across the Ugandan border. Nearly all of the Foundation’s scholarship recipients were forced to move into northern Ugandan refugee camps. Miraculously, with barely a pause, the Foundation’s local administrators were able to successfully place all of these refugees in boarding schools near them.

In 2019, the Wai Foundation awarded scholarships for tuition, room and board to 140 secondary-school girls – some two-thirds of them to South Sudanese refugees. The remainder went to Ugandan nationals, mostly from the Moyo District. Thirty-eight girls graduated with O-level certificates and one with an A-level. Despite the fact that Uganda closed its schools in April, 2020 due to the COVD-19 epidemic, the Foundation remains optimistic that the current scholarship recipients will be able to return to their schools and finish the semester.

At the local level, volunteer program administrators have always been the backbone of our scholarship program. Since our inception, this management has been the responsibility of two orders of Catholic nuns. The first, the Comboni Missionary Society steered operations from 2006 to 2018, providing fearless and energetic young nuns to coordinate the scholarships. When Comboni had to move its operations out of Uganda, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, based in Moyo, Uganda, stepped in without hesitation to replace them. It is impossible to overstate how important these competent, dedicated Sisters have been in the success of our undertakings.

In 2011, The Wai Foundation began to award scholarships to carefully-chosen graduates who wished to continue on to the tertiary level. Advanced-level scholars are currently studying at five schools in Juba, South Sudan and at seven in Uganda. Most young women have chosen studies in the medical field because of employment opportunities there. Thirteen tertiary-level Wai recipients have graduated, eight of whom are gainfully employed and five who are poised to follow by the end of their one-year internships.

The Wai Foundation is an almost entirely volunteer organization and our administrative costs are extremely low. Nearly every dollar received goes to an African girl who is desperately seeking an education and whose talents are urgently needed. The Foundation can take great pride that its scholarships are fundamentally altering the future for the recipients.