On April 13, U.S. Ambassador Stephen King signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Prague in support of U.S. Embassy Prague’s Baruv Fellowship Program for students from underserved communities. The City of Prague has agreed to host a Baruv Fellow for nine months, providing training and paying the participant a monthly stipend.
The private U.S. foundation, Bader Philanthropies, is cooperating with the NGO Slovo 21, which is administering the program. Slovo 21 and the Prague Municipal Office have already selected a Baruv Fellow, Jaroslav Bodiš, who is a student of Social Pedagogy and Social Work at the Academy of Social Pedagogy and Theology Jabok. He will begin his Fellowship next week.
The Baruv Fellowship Program has since 2015 provided placements in private companies, non-profit and government organizations for talented university students with ties to the Roma community or other underserved or disadvantaged communities in the Czech Republic. The goal of the Baruv Fellowship is to empower students from underprivileged communities by helping them gain professional skills to advance their future careers, while encouraging community leadership. The program is open to all Czech university students residing in the Czech Republic.
Ten fellows have graduated from the program over the past two years after having been placed in organizations such as the Albatros Media publishing house, the Office of the Government, the start-up tech company Atom Trace, and the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic.
