The Kellner Family Foundation’s sixty grantees are heading for 37 universities in Europe, the US and Asia

Every year, The Kellner Family Foundation distributes approximately CZK 10 million in grants under the Universities project. Since the 2009/2010 academic year, when the Universities project was launched, as many as 149 students have won grants. Amongst the grantees, the most popular universities include those in the UK (36 sponsored students this year), in the Czech Republic (12 students) and in the US (6 students). They will also travel to the Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland. The grantees also include graduates from the Open Gate eight-year grammar school who have attended this school thanks to need-based grants. One of them is Tereza Milošová, who will start to read law at the University of Cambridge this year.

“Over the eight years for which the foundation of Mrs Renáta Kellnerová and Mr Petr Kellner has been supporting university students, more than 70 young people have graduated from the university of their dreams, whether in the Czech Republic or elsewhere in the world. It is amazing to see the opportunities that good education offers them and how the young people are able to use it. Ranging from the commercial sphere to scientific careers to the non-profit sector to careers of professional artists – Universities project graduates are a credit to and promote the good name of the Czech Republic,” said Hana Halfarová, director of the Universities and Open Gate projects in The Kellner Family Foundation.

This year, 150 graduates from grammar and other secondary schools across the Czech Republic have applied for grants under the Universities project. The Kellner Family Foundation has published the 60 selected students on the project website. In addition to brief profiles, the website also offers blogs in which ‘older’ grantees post their impressions and experience.

The new grantees include, for example, Jakub Přibáň, who passed the International Baccalaureate examination with a full score of 45 points last May, thereby joining the group of less than 100 most successful students globally. Tereza Rozumková, who will have the opportunity to pursue her passion for art and video games as part of reading Game Art at the De Montfort University in the United Kingdom, is now also carrying out her dream. Her aim is to participate in the creation of games beneficial for the world, thanks to which people will be able to help both themselves and others. “I would like to develop my concept of video games helping people with mental disorders, and to work on the development of such games, thereby also using and diversifying the valuable knowledge of psychology that I have acquired at a secondary school in England,” said the new grantee during her interview in the grant-award process.

The fields of study that the Universities project grantees opt for have been stable for a long time; they most frequently include medical sciences, engineering subjects, and other humanities and social sciences. The only exception can be seen this year – a significant increase in interest in economics and management: seven grantees are taking this subject this year as opposed to one grantee in the last academic year.

This year, the 60 grantees will include the largest number of students from Prague (18) and from the Vysočina Region (6). Other grantees come from the Central Bohemian Region (5), the Ústí nad Labem Region (5), the Olomouc Region (5), the Moravian Silesian Region (5), the South Bohemian Region, the Hradec Králové Region and the Zlín Region (each 3 grantees), the Plzeň Region and the Liberec Region (each 2). One student comes from the South Moravian Region and one from the Karlovy Vary Region; one comes from Somalia.

The Kellner Family Foundation’s Universities project grantees meeting in August 2017