About Us
Stephen Shames Foundation is a non-profit organization that collects donations to educate AIDS orphans, child soldiers, sex slaves, child laborers, street kids, siblings in child-headed families and other vulnerable children in Uganda.

To achieve this goal we partner with Concern for the Future.

Concern for the Future is an indigenous NGO (non-profit) run by Director, Monica Nankoma and nine "moms" and "dads", six of whom are HIV positive. Our goal is to locate children living on the edges of society and mold them into leaders. Concern for the Future helps our smart, motivated AIDS orphans and child soldiers prepare for university.

Concern for the Future enrolls 75 students in the best boarding schools in Uganda. They are doing incredibly well.

student achievements

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Half our scholars attend the top eleven elite schools in the country -- where cabinet ministers send their children.

The children are watched over by the staff and the "moms", who are committed to being family to our students: to doing whatever it takes to help them succeed.

The Stephen Shames Foundation was started by photojournalist Stephen Shames because — while photographing AIDS orphans and street kids in Asia and Africa — Steve ran into children who desperately wanted to go to school but couldn’t because they lacked school fees. Children often get sent home from school because they don’t have a pen or paper. Steve realized a small amount of money could transform a child’s life.

Since 2000, Steve had been paying school fees for two orphaned brothers, Michael and Paddy. That grew to six the following year, then expanded to twenty in 2004. Keeping twenty students in school was too much to do alone, so Steve approached family and friends, and sold his photos, to raise money for the children.

In 2006, we further expanded our focus to include the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda. Open Society Institute gave Steve a grant to enroll a dozen students from refugee camps in the north. Four were child soldiers. Two lost limbs in the war. The OSI grant included a medical compnent and money to produce an educational and fund raising film on the situation in the north.

Today
We reached our most important milestone in June, 2007, when the Ugandan staff and students took over management of their program and formed Concern for the Future. It was always our goal for Concern for the Future to be independent and self-sustaining. We are delighted this is happening years ahead of schedule.

Thanks to incredible school children, caring religious communities, forward-thinking foundations, enlightened corporations, and people like you, the dream we had three years ago of providing the best education for orphans, working children, kids is refugee camps, and child soldiers is being realized.

The Stephen Shames Foundation and Concern for the Future offer an innovative remedy to the issue of child soldiers and abducted children; and to the HIV / AIDS crisis. Our model is replicable. While the education of young leaders and innovators will not solve all of Africa's woes, it is a crucial component of the solution and a proven remedy for poverty.

See what your donation accomplishes