The Stefan Batory Foundation

Equal Opportunities Program

Local Scholarship Funds

Polski | English

contact: Alina Wasilewska
e-mail: szanse@batory.org.pl
phone: (48 22) 536 02 59

Partner organizations

The program is funded by individual donors from Poland and abroad, including Polish taxpayers who donate each year 1% of their income tax.

The aim of Equal Opportunities - Local Scholarship Funds program run by the Foundation since 2000 is to develop a local scholarship system for secondary school students based on local community activity and resources. In this way we would like to contribute to equalize the educational opportunities of children from urban and rural areas and help talented youth from low-income families continue their secondary education.

The Foundation offers local organizations willing to run scholarship programs technical assistance in establishing and operating scholarship funds, building local coalitions, fund raising and funds’ management. Once a year, the organizations receive matching grants to supplement monies they have raised locally from local businesses, individual donors, and local governments.

The scholarship funds operate on a basis of their own eligibility criteria developed by committees comprised of representatives of local community: non-governmental organisations, educational institutions, local governments, business circles and media. Scholarship grants approved and provided by these committees amount to EUR 25-60 per month. The students use them to buy handbooks and other learning aids, commute to school, pay for dormitory and extracurricular training, etc. The scholarship grant decisions usually depend on the candidates’ favourable grade performance, family income, involvement in work benefiting the local community, or other extracurricular achievements.

In 2008 the project involved 40 organizations in 16 provinces of Poland including two supported by Nestle Company Poland. They were assisted in their tasks by Nidzica Community Foundation which provided trainings and consultations for the whole network of local scholarship funds. The monies the organisations raised in local communities, supplemented by 622 610 PLN in grants provided by the Stefan Batory Foundation from donations by individual and business donors helped to fund 1137 monthly scholarships in the school year 2008/2009. Given the number of scholarship grants, the Equal Opportunity-Local Scholarship Funds program ranks third as a runner-up to the scholarship programs sponsored by the Agricultural Property Agency, by the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Education and Sport.

In 2009, we invited several new organisations to join the program. In May, the new organisations as well as those which took part in the previous editions of the program, delivered the proposals for funding the local scholaship programs in the school year 2009/2010. 38 organisations received the promise for grants on total amount of 631 150 PLN. The final list of grants and their amount will be published in September, after the organisations finish to collect additional funding from local sources in the amount they had declared in grant proposals.