Partners
THE KELLNER FAMILY FOUNDATION, Renata and Petr Kellner´s family foundation, contributes to the development of society and helps to improve the quality of life. It currently finances three long-term educational projects: Helping Schools to Succeed, OPEN GATE, and the UNIVERSITIES Project. In 2011, THE KELLNER FAMILY FOUNDATION merged with the Educa Foundation established by Mrs. Renata Kellnerova and Mr. Petr Kellner in 2002.
Among other things, the foundation seeks out and supports academically gifted children and young people who are growing up in circumstances that hinder or prevent their access to a high-quality education. These are mainly children raised outside their families, for example, in foster care, and SOS child-care villages, and from socially disadvantaged families such as single-parent families and low-income families. The OPEN GATE and UNIVERSITIES projects help these children receive good secondary and tertiary education, thereby multiplying their chances of success later in their lives.
The Helping Schools to Succeed project is aimed at high-quality education, with emphasis on teachers' personalized approach to pupils in public schools in the Czech Republic. Long-term educational, material, and personnel support will help teachers better discern pupils' individual needs and adjust their style of teaching accordingly, thereby achieving the best possible pedagogical results. The project envisages basic support for five years and the gradual involvement of 14 schools involved. The procedures and tools developed for education and tested at these schools will then also be offered to other schools in the country.
In addition to initiating and financing its core educational projects, the foundation has contributed to municipalities for mitigation of damage caused by floods, and also provides grants to other individuals and institutions for educational, cultural, and health projects.
Contacts abroad
OPEN GATE’s administration works intensively to strengthen the schools relationships abroad. The objective of this endeavour consists in regular student exchanges that for young people represent an extraordinary opportunity and experience that they will find valuable even in their life and studies. Of no less importance are short- and medium-term assignments for teachers, exchange of experience from the area of school administrations, utilisation of modern teaching methods and resolution of current problems in teaching and tutoring.
The most intensive cooperation in this regard is with Wymondham College, a prestigious boarding school with over one thousand students near Norwich in Norfolk, East Anglia, Great Britain. OPEN GATE and Wymondham College have already conducted four student exchanges in which 13 teachers from both schools participated.
In 2009 cooperation was established with BASIS Tucson and BASIS Scottsdale in Arizona, USA. Newsweek magazine named BASIS Tuscon the best public school in the United States in 2008. Since 2008 another mutual exchange programme has been in progress in cooperation with Lycée Campostal in the Brittany region of France. OPEN GATE students have already twice stayed with French host families and attended the French lyceum. Yet another student exchange took place in 2009 with an Egyptian school having IB authorisation, the Modern English School in Cairo. Students from Italy and Bosnia and Herzegovina again visited OPEN GATE. Cooperation with foreign schools and institutions also conducted at the level of continuing education of teachers and acquisition of professional experience in conferences, workshops and certified trainings focused on IB issues.
