The ultimate goal of charities should not be to enrich individuals, but to help them build cooperative societies capable of supporting the most vulnerable.

I agree with that. But paying for a kids school is not enriching individuals. They don't get a financial benefit out of it, they just get education, which in the end is something that can only be applied individually. Meaning that while you could build a school for a whole village instead, in this case there is probably already a school there, it's just that the school system is set up such that you still need to pay for the school uniform, books, food, fees, etc, and some families can't even afford that.

And it'd not like local cooperation doesn't happen. I know one family who took in kids from their village from a disabled mother who could not care for them so that they could go to school. The family that we rented our rooms from was always full of people because they took in relatives from their village so they could get a chance at finding work in the city. I had kids where the families already did their best to cover the cost, but sometimes it wasn't enough. So I added a little bit to cover the rest. To enable them to participate on a school trip that they would otherwise have to sit out on. To buy lunch instead of going hungry until they got home because the money was just a bit short.

So what Luke is doing is just more of what the locals are doing already. Finding cases that fall through the cracks.

The thing with building cooperative societies is that it starts with education. You can't just waltz in as a foreigner into a village and say: OK, we are going to teach you how to cooperate. That doesn't work. You teach a few individuals by being an example of what it means to be cooperative and then let the locals spread the experience. But this takes the work of many people. Luke is doing what he can as an individual from where he is, and he has to trust that his efforts will add to the efforts of others, locals and non-locals alike to eventually make a difference. I actually moved here to do the same in a different way, but that's not something everyone can do, nor should they.

Helping people is much harder than simply giving money to someone in a way that makes you feel good about yourself

True, but again, paying for someones education is not doing that.