“I AM TOMORROW’S FUTURE”
Nolonwabo Batini, a 15-year-old girl from Ndzondelelo High School in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, made this self-confident discovery when Roger visited her school. Her conviction became the vision and the central theme of the Roger Federer Foundation.
The Roger Federer Foundation enhances a world where children living in poverty are able to take control of their future and actively shape it thanks to access to high quality early learning and education. We therefore wish to empower as many African children as possible by further developing existing educational services and early support in a sustainable way. Our goal is to maximize individual potential, build capacities of all relevant stakeholders in education and create opportunities. Although access to primary education has significantly increased in recent years, fundamental problems such as low classroom performance, poor attendance, high numbers of drop-outs and low completion rates still persist or lack of early childhood education. The quality of early support and basic education is crucial as it is the foundation of all learning.
The Roger Federer Foundation’s strategic priority is therefore the support of existing but poor support services in early childhood care centers, preschools and primary schools for children 3 to 12 years old as well as the improvement of their efficiency and effectiveness. In Switzerland we promote underpriviledged children in their recreational activities.
We believe in the potential of all people and do everything to empower them to improve their situation by themselves. As a consequence the Roger Federer Foundation only works with carefully selected local organizations in long-term partnerships. We support the development of skills and ensure that the population accepts it responsibility to solve the problems. We don’t deliver hardware to the people but empower them to organize the needed resources by themselves. We follow strictly this approach because we truely believe that this is only way to reach sustainable systemic change and improvement of the situation. In order to be cost efficient and cost effective we limit our engagement on one region in Africa and are conducting programs in six countries in Southern Africa plus Switzerland.
The Roger Federer Foundation is a professionally managed Grant Foundation that is committed to the rules of the Swiss Foundation Code. The organization strictly follows a system of checks and balances and an efficient project management cycle. Transparency, measurability and evaluation of the activities are fundamental. As a learning institution the Foundation seeks the advice of experts and stakeholders and is therefore a member of SwissFoundations, an association of Swiss Grant Foundations.