The KWES Foundation is a charitable nonprofit corporation formed in 2023 by Kun Jiang and Sjors Jansen. We work to give more children access to quality education and learning materials.  More information on our programs can be found [here].

“We have always felt that education really transformed our lives, and we see the same happening to our own children as they are growing up.  When they started their school careers, we were living in Nigeria and they visited the Dutch International school there. Sjors acted as the volunteer chairman of school’s board and oversaw the building of new classrooms, a gymnasium, and the upgrading of the school’s library.

In weekends our family often visited a beach hut to spend some time away from the city.  During our regular trips, we met with the local community.  We learned that there were three small schools for almost 400 children there, each basically a single classroom where kids were sitting together in their grade groups.  Seeing that the schools had hardly any textbooks or writing materials for their pupils, we decided to source and donate these.  We ended up providing well over 900 textbooks for preschool and elementary learners, and around 1,200 exercise books and sets of writing materials.  We followed up with the schools on our later visits to the beach, and we were happy to see that the books were still in full use by the time we left Nigeria for the USA. 

Sjors continued to visit Africa, mainly East Africa, and the scale and urgency of the education challenge has become clearer to us over time.  Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s youngest population but also the highest out-of-school rate with up to 20% of primary school age children not attending school.

We felt that we wanted to do more to help, and we decided to form and fund a charitable nonprofit corporation to do just that.  As we see it, we owe a debt to our education, and we want to pay it forward by supporting the children of today.” Kun & Sjors

We owe a debt to our educations, and we want to pay it forward by supporting the children of today.

Kun & Sjors, Founders of KWES Foundation.