WELCOME TO THE ROYAL MERCHANT NAVY EDUCATION FOUNDATION

Today’s Royal Merchant Navy Education Foundation started life in 1827 as The Merchants’ Seamen’s Orphan Asylum, which was tasked not only with providing board and lodging for the orphans of British Merchant Navy seamen but also, and pertinently, with sufficient education to enable them to obtain employment.

It is now a British national children’s educational charity, which provides funding for the needy British children of Merchant Navy seafarers, professional sea-going fishermen and RNLI lifeboat crew members, who have served or are serving at sea and who are unable to meet their children’s educational needs. Our Patron HM the late Queen and our President HRH the late Duke of Edinburgh, KG, KT, OM.

We help our beneficiaries, or ‘Foundationers’ as we call them, by providing support that ‘enables education’ – which could be anything from school fees, textbooks or uniform, right through to computers, internet access or even shoe repairs!

To find out more about our work, and how we might be able to help you or someone you know, please get in touch today or click here to view our case studies.

HOW WE HAVE HELPED

“Everything we do is focused on changing young people’s lives by enabling their education.”
Commander Charles Heron-Watson, Secretary

Please read the case studies below to find out how we have directly supported our Foundationers.