The Foundation is not a parallel institution. It is the Trust's reach extended, its time horizon lengthened, and its conscience made operational; doing for SJET what the Trust cannot reasonably do alone, across four pillars
Building for the Future
Reaching Boys Who Cannot Reach Us
Future-Proofing the Schools
Honouring the People Who Built This
An Opportunity for Meaningful Change
Principles
The Foundation does what the Trust cannot reasonably do. Long-term by design, rigorous about impact, and discreet where discretion is owed. Independent in governance, aligned in purpose. The Foundation maintains its own fiduciary discipline, always in service of the Trust's mission.
Long-term Ambition
The Foundation is being built to last in perpetuity. Its long-term ambition is a permanent capital base whose investment income, not each year's fundraising, becomes the principal source of its annual support to the SJET. That is the architecture of an endowment.
What Success Looks Like
A generation from now the schools' infrastructure is among the finest on the continent. A meaningful proportion of the student body is here because of the Foundation, and the schools are visibly stronger and more representative of Zimbabwean talent for it.
Building for the Future
The Foundation will support capital projects and institutional investments that fall beyond any single Trust budget cycle, investing with the next fifty years in mind, not the next five. Every contribution will be additive to what the Trust is already doing. The Foundation does not direct. It enables.
At any given time the Foundation will identify a flagship capital project as the focus of this pillar: a landmark facility, built to the highest standard, designed to serve boys, families and the wider community for generations.
Reaching Boys Who Cannot Reach Us
There are extraordinary young Zimbabweans, boys of character, talent and potential, whose families cannot pay SJET fees and never will. Working with our schools the Foundation will find those boys, bring them in on full holistic scholarships, and support them across every dimension of school life.
A Foundation scholarship is not a fee waiver. It is a complete commitment to a boy's development from arrival to graduation and beyond. A scholarship boy should make St John's better, not simply be made better by it.
Future-Proofing the Schools
The world these boys will enter is changing faster than any school operating budget can track. The Foundation's role is to work alongside the schools, funding pilots, visiting practitioners, curriculum partnerships and technology initiatives on a trial basis. What works, the schools absorb permanently. What does not is borne by the Foundation, not the Trust.
This is not change for its own sake. It is how schools that are excellent today remain excellent for the generations that follow.
Honouring the People Who Built This
This is the moral heart of the Foundation. The men and women who gave their professional lives to SJET boys built something remarkable, often across decades of extraordinary economic turbulence in Zimbabwe. Some are now in financial circumstances that bear no relationship to the contribution they made, through no fault of their own.
The Foundation will provide direct, discreet and dignified assistance to former staff in genuine hardship. Over time it will work to strengthen retirement provisions for current and future staff, so that a gifted teacher building a career here can do so with greater security in old age.
What Your Support Delivers
Every gift above $6,000 makes you a member of the Foundation Circle, the group of people who were there at the beginning, whose commitment made everything else possible.
$6,000
Shepherd's Friend
One term of a Foundation scholarship or a contribution toward staff welfare support for former teachers who gave their careers to St John’s. Founding donor recognition, named permanently in the Foundation’s records.
$18,000
Shepherd's Scholar
Funds one complete year of a Foundation scholarship, first day to last, or a meaningful contribution to building for the future or the future-proofing work. Named on the Foundation website.
$50,000
Shepherd's Champion
Contributes towards three years of a boy’s journey at St John’s, or a significant contribution to building for the future. Named recognition across all Foundation platforms.
$100,000
Shepherd's Legacy
One boy. Form 1 to Form 6. Fully funded for the entirety of his secondary education, or a transformational contribution to building for the future or the endowment. Your family’s name on something permanent.
$500,000
Shepherd Endowment Founder
Gifts of this scale go directly to the endowment capital base. Investment income is deployed annually across the Foundation’s four pillars preserving the capital permanently while funding the work every year.