JdiobeSTEM Foundation is extending its school programs into South Sudan. Announcing an expansion is easy. This article is about the unglamorous part — registration, employment law, safeguarding routes, cash handling and security — because that is the part that decides whether a program survives its second term.
Why South Sudan
We already work in Uganda and the United States. School partnerships run in Uganda, and now in South Sudan.
The case is not complicated. There are secondary students in South Sudan who can reason carefully and who have never had anyone show them what an engineer actually does. The constraint is not talent. It is that almost every input a science program normally assumes — a working laboratory, a reliable supplier, a road that is passable in the rains, a phone signal — cannot be assumed.
So we designed for its absence rather than complaining about it. Our programs already run without mains electricity and without an internet connection. That was a choice made for rural Uganda, and it is what makes South Sudan possible at all.
What is actually in place
Registration. JdiobeSTEM Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the United States, registered to operate in South Sudan with the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC). Keeping that registration, and any State or County agreement required where we work, current is a named duty of one person, not a shared aspiration.
Employment law. Staff in South Sudan are employed under the Labour Act, 2017 (Act No. 64 of 2017). We wrote a country-specific contract rather than translating the Ugandan one, because the two statutes differ on notice, leave and overtime. Our template carries a standing rule: it may only improve on the Labour Act, never reduce it. Where the Act gives a better term than the contract, the Act wins.
Governance. The constitution, the conflict-of-interest register, the meeting and resolution templates and the safeguarding undertaking were all drafted before the first school visit, not after the first problem.
The 80% rule is the point, not an obstacle
The NGO Act 2016 requires that a minimum of 80% of an NGO’s employees, at all levels, are South Sudanese citizens, and that the ratio is reported.
We are not going to pretend that is a compliance burden we are gracefully absorbing. An organization that needs a legal instrument to make it hire nationals has already lost the argument. A South Sudanese teacher knows which roads flood, which head teacher answers a phone, and what a family will and will not say in front of a stranger. We could not buy that knowledge if we tried.
The rule is reported on at every level, including management. We treat the ratio as a measure of whether the country program is genuinely local, not as a threshold to clear.
One person accountable
South Sudan is run by a Country Coordinator who reports to the Executive Director. The role holds the school relationships, delivers or supervises the programs, and accounts for the money.
It is worth being explicit about what that person may not do, because the limits are the safeguard:
- They do not sign a partnership agreement or a lease. The Executive Director signs.
- They do not commit the organization to costs above a written limit.
- They do not travel, or send anyone else to travel, against the security advice. No session is worth it, and no report is late enough to change that. The decision to stop is recorded either way.
- They do not make a facilitation payment of any kind. If somebody asks for one, they refuse it, record it, and tell the Executive Director the same day.
- They do not hold parent or guardian consent. The school holds it.
- They do not approve their own expenses.
That last set is short and blunt on purpose. Every line of it exists because organizations working in hard places have broken it.
Money, in a currency that moves
The country program runs on a float in South Sudanese pounds. Every transaction is recorded, every receipt kept, and the exchange rate used on the day is recorded with the transaction — not reconstructed later from a monthly average. Accounts reconcile monthly with the Finance and Administration Officer in Uganda.
Materials are sourced locally where possible. Where they must come from outside, long lead times are planned for, and the Coordinator is expected to say in advance when something will not arrive in time rather than explain afterwards why a session did not run.
Safeguarding, and an honest gap
Our standard is the same in every country: an adult from the school is present at every session, no JdiobeSTEM person is ever alone with a learner, and any child protection concern is reported within 24 hours. The school holds guardian consent — we do not collect it.
Two country-specific pieces are being finalized before delivery begins: the external reporting route for a concern raised in South Sudan, and the local security advice source used for go/no-go decisions. In Uganda the reporting route runs to the Police Child and Family Protection Unit, the district probation and social welfare officer and the national child helpline. South Sudan needs its own named equivalents, and a policy that names no one is not a policy.
There is also a gap we would rather state than paper over. As at July 2026 South Sudan has no comprehensive data protection law and no designated authority. We therefore apply the Ugandan standard there voluntarily. Children’s data does not become less sensitive because a statute has not caught up.
What changes in the programs, and what does not
The four programs are the same: Research, Science Fair, Scholarships and Mentorship. The delivery model is the same — everything runs through the school, which provides a room, a timetabled slot, lockable storage, an adult at every session and a named focal point teacher. We pay no money to schools and we do not build parallel institutions.
What changes is the recording. Location is captured as State and County rather than district. Where it is relevant we record whether a learner is from a refugee or a host community, which matters more in South Sudan and in Uganda’s refugee-hosting districts than anywhere else we work. Registers, session records and attendance summaries use the identical forms to Uganda, so the figures combine into one set of national and cross-country totals rather than two incompatible spreadsheets.
Materials adapt to what is locally available. The method does not.
What we are not claiming
We have not yet run a term of programming in South Sudan. We are not going to describe intent as achievement.
What we will report, when there is something to report, is the same measure we hold ourselves to in Uganda: how many students submitted a project proposal, how many were funded, and how many finished and filed a final report with receipts attached. Not attendance at a launch.
Get in touch
Schools in South Sudan interested in a partnership, and organizations already working in education there, should write to info@jdiobestem.org or call +1 405-437-4755.
Schools apply on one form. We visit before anything is signed.
