Questions and answers

We are launching in Nigeria (Jalingo, Kano, Lagos, Taraba and Yobe) and Uganda (Kampala), the towns where our team already has people on the ground. New schools are added as they are signed up and checked by our team.

Sponsorship is a monthly amount you choose in the app when you set it up, and you can pause or stop it at any time. Your sponsorship is matched to one child's enrolment, which lists what their schooling costs in plain words: fees, uniform, books and meals.

Yes. One sponsor, one child, for as long as you keep sponsoring. A child needs the same sponsor for years, so we built it that way.

Every partner school has a tablet at the entrance. Each morning the child looks at it, it recognises them from face samples stored only on that tablet, and records the sign-in. On the first of the month those sign-ins are added up into the report you receive. If the tablet cannot recognise a child, a teacher records the sign-in by hand with a reason, and we can see which kind is which.

Each partner school agrees with us the share of school days it expects its pupils to be there for, usually 80 percent of a month. Your monthly report shows your child's attendance beside that figure, so you can see how the month went at a glance. It does not change your sponsorship, and the school is paid for your child's costs either way.

It never leaves the school's tablet. The app keeps a mathematical description of the face on the device and discards the photos. Our servers store only the fact that a child signed in, when, and on which tablet. Face data is removed from the tablet when the pupil leaves the school. A parent's consent is required and recorded before a child is enrolled.

No. You see an avatar, the child's first name, age, class year and town, their attendance each month and notes from the teacher. Photos of schoolwork or a gift can be shared, and the app checks them on the device so that nothing containing a face is sent. There is no messaging between you and the child.

Not by name. We match you with the next child in our checked queue the day after your first payment. This keeps the programme fair to every child a school has enrolled.

Yes. From your child's screen you can send a gift the school has flagged, like shoes, books or a uniform, or a fixed amount. The teacher buys it locally and confirms with a photo of the item, and you see it in your updates.

Your sponsorship ends and the child goes back into our queue to be matched with a new sponsor. You can pause instead of stopping if you would rather come back to the same child.

We are launching, so the honest answer is that our first partner schools are still coming online. We will publish real numbers on this site as soon as there are real numbers to publish, and we will not invent them before then.

Level Learning is built by the team behind DOGO, a charity that has spent years paying hospital bills for patients in Nigeria and Uganda and showing every donor exactly who they helped. We are using the same platform, pointed at schooling.

Read the page for partner schools and email info@dogoapp.org with a few lines about your school.