Think
the unthought

A quality cultivated through the liberal arts.

The generation responsible for the future of East-Central Europe has liberal democracy to thank for three decades of unprecedented social and economic stability. But the fortune of this political construct is no longer a given. We’ve been accustomed to believe that laws and independent institutions would alone guarantee our political freedoms. Education was treated as subservient to the economy, a form of vocational training. We now see that this view was irresponsibly optimistic and intellectually wanting. In order to effectively stand up to the challenges posed by illiberal forces, artificial intelligence or the climate crises, we need to change the way we understand the role of education and see it for what it always was: a vital process of living up to our potential as humans and citizens.

We draw inspiration from the educational legacy of Roman Czernecki — a teacher and educational activist, organizer of clandestine schooling during World War II, dean of the School of Pedagogy in Gdańsk, and lecturer in the history of philosophy at the Warsaw University of Technology.

The values that guided Professor Czernecki inspired his son, Andrzej—a nuclear physicist, entrepreneur, and member of the Polish Parliament—to establish EFC Foundation in 2009. Our work is possible thanks to an endowment he set up, the first philanthropic initiative of this scale in Poland.

Today, the Foundation is led by his sons, Igor and Andrzej, with the support of Jan Krzewiński.

We remain committed to the values embodied by the Foundation’s patron, Roman Czernecki, and its founder, Andrzej Czernecki, while continuously reflecting on and refining our strategy to keep pace with a changing world.