Our Partners

With their work for the worldwide Waldorf movement the Friends of Waldorf Education are right in the centre of a network of different actors.

“Together we can achieve more,” – This sentence can be placed in all honesty as a motto over our work. It does not apply only to the collected donations of so many different people, but also our own co-work with other organisations working for the international schools movement.

Sister Organisations and Other Foundations

In some countries in Europe, there are smaller “sister organisations,” who work in a similar way to ourselves:

- In Denmark Sanduko
- In Sweden SOFIA
- In Holland the Internationaale Hulpfonds, the Stichting Helias und the Stichting ter bevordering von de Heilpedagogie.
- In Switzerland Acacia.

The annual Income to which each of these organisations attain reaches from a few thousand through to 500,000 Euros. For the last 5 years there has existed between these funding organisations a kind of loose network coordination, which finds expression in the annual meetings and the exchange of information about the projects that are being supported.

Then we, on our part, have a co-operation with several different Foundations. Particularly building projects can usually only be funded if all the foundations who are in any way engaged in this field, all work together. So for the last 10 years there exists a special “Working Group Capital for Educations Investments, in which the Friends of Waldorf Education together with representatives of five other foundations – Software Foundation, Mahle Foundation, GLS Treuhand e.V,. IONA Foundation (NL) and Evidenz (CH) – meet about 3 times a year to consider how the most urgent undertakings can be financed. Co-workers from the IAO and Christoph Wiechert of the Educational Section in Dornachs are also part of these conversations.

So here we are dealing with those organisations who are directly concerned with the content of Waldorf Education and with whom we work together on different levels.

“Waldorf-Organisations”

A close co-operation binds us to the Educational Section at the Goetheanum, Dornach, amongst other things in the search for travelling Waldorf teachers who can work as voluntary mentors, or the reception of new schools into the international list of Waldorf schools – but also in receiving and passing on of donations for the Section and for the International Teacher’s Conference.

We are in close contact with the IAO (International Association Osteuropa) in relation to, for instance, the exchange of travel reports and experiences or to the “Fund for Small Projects” set up by the Software AG Foundation, whose funds are directed through our offices, about the use of which we then decide together.

With the “International Association of Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Education” IASWECE, re-founded in 2005/06, we work together in the sphere of Early Childhood Education. In this last year we were able to make available a large sum of money to support this organisation in its summer conference.

The co-operation with the three above organisations is so close that representatives of the Section, the IAO and the IASWECE also take part in the monthly Executive meetings of the Friends of Waldorf Education, if they are able to do so.

Our longest relationship is with the German Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen. Following Dr. Manfred Leist, Bernd Ruf was the liaison between the two Executive committees, a role that has since 2008 been taken over by Henning Kulak-Ublick. This allows the Executive of the Bund to have a direct, living insight into the affairs of the international schools movement and can, we hope, participate in it and assist it in meeting its needs.

… and others

One could extend the circle indefinitely. But besides these, there are, of course, a large number of other partners. Of these, we need to mention, above all,

- the German Government Ministry for Economic Co-operation (BMZ), which co-finances a few building projects each year.
- The European Council of Seiner Waldorf Schools (ECSWE), in whose meetings we take part, and which is co-responsible for the WOW-Day.
- Or the Rudolf Steiner Foundation in the USA, which passes on donations received there for many projects, because we are the ones that have the connections with these projects.
- And there are, of course, the many bigger and smaller Foundation in Germany, who contribute to one or other school project, which we then, in our turn, pass on.

We are very grateful to all of these partners for their committed co-work, and look forward to a continued harmonious co-operation in working for the cause of the Waldorf School’s Movement.

Holger Niederhausen