An 18-year-old founded a nonprofit that has already paid for 10 children to attend primary school in Ghana, funding tuition, uniforms, meals and transportation through a foundation he built out of his own weekly allowance. Max Owobu says he is from the Bronx, and he started the Yenko Foundation after noticing kids his age in Ghana working instead of sitting in a classroom.
Owobu began spending summers in Ghana in 2023, and that's where he says he first saw the gap between opportunity and circumstance up close. As reported by Good News Network, he watched children working with their families instead of attending school, a pattern he later described in blunter terms. “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,” Owobu told Inside Philanthropy.
That observation didn't stay abstract for long. Before the Yenko Foundation even had a name, Owobu and his brother Alexander were already using part of their weekly allowance to sponsor a child's education, according to the foundation's own account on its website. One of those early cases involved a boy named Matthew, whose schooling Owobu funded with money saved from his allowance after Matthew reported being hit and appeared afraid at his previous school. “As soon as we could, we took him out of that school, funded his education and sent him to Calvary Methodist,” Owobu said, per the same account from Inside Philanthropy.
How a $1,000 Sponsorship Works
The Yenko Foundation, which describes itself as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on its site, now raises money specifically to sponsor children's K-5 education in Ghana, covering school meals, tuition and uniforms. The organization says sponsoring one child for a full year costs $1,000, a figure that covers tuition, uniforms, transportation, meals and supplies, according to a report from Impactful Ninja. The foundation's own site frames it the same way, stating that every $1,000 raised gives a Ghanaian child an assist with tuition, uniforms, safe transportation and daily meals.
Owobu told Inside Philanthropy he raised around $17,000 through donations to fund the education of the 10 children the foundation has now sponsored. A GuideStar profile for the organization states it paid for tuition, food and transportation for 10 kids to attend Calvary Methodist School in Accra for the 2025/2026 school year. Owobu learned about Calvary Methodist and chose to operate there, and he has described the children he met at the school as joyful and enthusiastic.
Finding the right kids to sponsor isn't left to guesswork. The foundation identifies students through school administrators and family friends who know children facing financial barriers, with Owobu explaining the process bluntly: “We ask the school president, who gave us certain kids who went to the school but couldn't go any longer due to financial issues,” he told Inside Philanthropy.
Why Private School Tuition Looms So Large in Ghana
Quality education in Ghana is often attained through private schools, and those schools charge tuition costs that can be out of reach for many families, according to Good News Network's reporting. In Accra specifically, some school operators may charge parents hundreds of dollars for what amounts to inadequate childcare rather than genuine schooling, the outlet reported. The Yenko Foundation's own materials point to a related obstacle in rural areas, noting that poor roads and high transport costs make it hard for rural children to attend school at all.
The scale of the challenge nationally is stark. Nearly 623,500 Ghanaian children of primary-school age are not enrolled in primary school, and one in four children ages four to five is not enrolled in preschool, according to UNICEF. The agency also reports that classes are commonly overcrowded, with inadequate water and sanitation facilities and shortages of trained teachers and school books.
The out-of-school numbers get worse across older age brackets. More than 1 million primary- through secondary-aged children in Ghana remain out of school altogether, and nearly 28% of children ages 5 to 17 are engaged in child labor, with around 21% working in hazardous conditions, per a UNICEF press release on the country's child-labor action plan. UNICEF ties that labor to a web of causes — poverty, limited access to quality education, inadequate social protection, gender inequality and thin child-protection systems, the agency said. Ghana's Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations launched a five-year Accelerated Action Plan Against Child Labour in June 2023 aimed at some of those same pressures.
Cost data from elsewhere in Ghana underscores how quickly school expenses can strain a household budget. A survey of 1,000 households and 30 government and private institutions in Kasoa, with data collected in 2014, found that household costs for private education ran about 50% higher than for government schools, according to a report from r4d.org. That same research identified food costs and extra fees as a significant affordability challenge for families, separate from tuition itself. A 2010 estimate cited in the report found that low-cost private schools made up 40% of Ghana's private schools, or about 12% of all schools nationwide.
What Comes Next for the Foundation
Owobu isn't treating 10 sponsored children as a finish line. He has said he plans to sponsor between 10 and 15 children through primary school going forward, and he's also looking beyond classrooms entirely, with plans to expand the foundation's support to hospitals and orphanages in Ghana. More broadly, Owobu has said he wants to help anyone who needs help in the country.
