About us
We bring people together to solve what no one can solve alone.
Our story
The Banister Foundation was founded on a truth its co-founders know first-hand: the hardest problems families face — violence at home, poverty, missed education — are not separate problems. They feed each other, and they pass from one generation to the next.
So we decided to work on the cycle itself. We protect families from violence, invest in the livelihoods that make independence possible, and open the doors to education — because a child who is safe, supported, and learning is a cycle broken.
Today our flagship work is in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where we're building technology infrastructure that connects children to the modern world. But wherever we work, the goal is the same: every child healthy, educated, and free to thrive.
Why we exist
“From the darkest soil, the most beautiful flowers can bloom.”
This foundation wasn't born from a single moment. It grew out of a life lived inside the cycles we now work to break — a childhood marked by violence at home, a community where suffering was witnessed and met with silence, and the long work of survival and rebirth that followed.
Co-founder Kevin was still a child when he ran through the streets to save his mother. Years later, he wrote a requiem for a woman in his community whose pain everyone knew and no one stopped. Between those two moments lies everything this foundation stands against — and everything it stands for.
We exist so that no woman has to endure that pain in silence, and so that her children grow up with the safety, opportunity, and education that break the cycle for good. Cycles of abuse can be broken. New narratives can be written. Hope can be reborn.
The pain becomes purpose. The trauma becomes testimony.
Who we are
Meet the founders
Kevin Banister
Co-Founder
Kevin's path to this work is his own life. He was still a child when he ran through the streets to save his mother — a moment of raw courage that became the foundation for a life spent protecting others from the same trauma. The cycles this foundation works to break are cycles he survived.
Even his name is part of the story: chosen as an act of rebirth, in homage to Cyan Banister, whose story of transformation reached him at his lowest point. The foundation carries that name as living proof that new narratives can be written — for him, and for every woman and child it serves.
A technologist by trade, Kevin is Co-Founder and CTO of Legal Nia and Nairobi ambassador for ClimateHack. He leads the foundation's programs, including its technology-infrastructure work for children in eastern DRC, and writes essays on justice, identity, and society on his blog.
Julie Mariage
Co-Founder
Julie is a French-Swiss social and behavioural sciences graduate who spent three years in the nonprofit and international development sector, building long-term, community-owned programs centred on sustainable and emotional well-being.
Now training in Therapeutic Coaching — a model developed by Dr. Alex Howard that integrates developmental psychology, hypnotherapy, NLP, EFT, and mindfulness — she brings trauma-informed, person-centred practice to the foundation's work with survivors, from group counselling to community outreach.
Mission
To break the cycles of domestic violence, tackle poverty, and enhance access to education — bringing people together to solve the world's most pressing challenges.
Vision
A world where every child grows up healthy, educated, and with the opportunity to thrive — no matter where they are born.
What guides us
Our values
Dignity
Every person we work with is a partner, never a project. We design programs around people's own goals and agency.
Courage
We take on the problems others look away from — violence behind closed doors, children the world has forgotten.
Partnership
We don't parachute in. We fund, follow, and stand behind local leaders who were doing this work long before us.
Accountability
We measure honestly, share what we learn — including failures — and hold ourselves to the outcomes, not the optics.
Why the sprout
Small beginnings. Deep roots. Relentless growth.
Our emblem is a seedling — because that's how every cycle breaks. Not all at once, but one child kept safe, one family lifted, one classroom connected. Given protection and the right conditions, growth takes care of the rest.
How we're built
Small team. Local partners. Long horizon.
We keep our own footprint small and put resources where they matter: with local organizations, schools, and leaders who know their communities. Our role is to fund, connect, and stay — for as long as the work takes.
Work with usStay connected
Follow the work as it happens
Stories from the field, program updates, and ways to help — a short email, a few times a year.