Zakladni skola a Stredni skola Donum Felix s.r.o.

Základní škola a Střední škola Donum Felix is an elementary and secondary private school in Kladno. Kladno is a town in Central Bohemia County (Středočeský kraj), which is very close to Prague, the capital city of Czech Republic. We provide elementary education to children aged 6-15 and high school education for youth and young adults from the age of 16 to 21. This year, we have 85 children in the elementary school, 21 high school students and more than 20 professionals employed in our school. Our main goal is to spread and promote alternative ways of informal and democratic education. Our aim is to prepare children for the emerging world which we believe will be based on ability to learn (and unlearn), develop our own talents, creativity, self-management and self-realization, positive communication, cooperation and democratic networks. We have exceedingly high demand from parents and children interested in attending our school. Our basic values are trust, mutual respect, freedom and responsibility. We use tools like full age mixing, non-violent communication, learning methods relying on inner motivation, self-directed learning and cooperation in a safe and prepared environment. This way our children are enabled to educate themselves for the rapidly changing world they will live in. Our school is based on several pillars: - inclusion, equality and positive atmosphere - mutual respect and promotion of positive relationships to oneself and to others, which continuously builds the school community through democratic school institutions and through modelling non-violent communication - advanced application of democratic principles in school life (decision-making and achieving consent through sociocracy and conflict resolution built on acceptance of responsibility and mediation) - self-directed learning in a safe and supportive environment based on inner motivation in a diverse group of people. We are members of an international network of democratic schools EUDEC (www.eudec.org). We have become a model school for many start-ups and organizations not only in Czech Republic, but also in Slovakia. We are one of the founding members of ASDŠ (www.asociacesds.cz) - Association of Free Democratic Schools of Czech Republic. Our activities and projects include: - hosting participants from various countries in our democratic school - three recent European Solidarity Corps volunteering projects (one successfully finished in July 2019, the second one finished in August 2021 and the third one ongoing. One volunteer is still active in the third project, five volunteers already finished their mission in previous projects and returned to their home country). We would like to continue and upgrade these projects, therefore we are applying for this Quality Label. - long-term cooperation with partners from around the world with similar interests (e.g. Jerusalem Sudbury democratic school from Israel, De Ruimte democratic school from Netherlands). - participating in a new international project Strategic Partnerships for school education (KA201) in cooperation with PT01 Agência Nacional Erasmus+ Educação e Formação was paused due to the Covid-19 restrictions. - active participation of our organization ́s representatives in international partnership-building activities, workshops, seminars, meetings on national and international levels, dissemination and mutual experience-sharing with other organizations.