Introduction - MacJannet Foundation on Social Media

Donald and Charlotte MacJannet were 20^th-Century teachers who inspired many people through a revolutionary concept: Education should be exciting.

In their school outside Paris, their summer camp near Talloires on beautiful Lake Annecy in the French Alps, and finally at their remarkable summer home, the thousand-year-old Prieuré in Talloires, they practiced what they preached— exposing students to diverse cultures and the concept of “learning by doing” amid an awe-inspiring environment. The ultimate learning experience, they believed, involved achieving deep empathy for people of other cultures, past as well as present.

To carry on their work, in 1968 their friends organized the MacJannet Foundation. In particular, the Foundation sought to preserve and perpetuate Le Prieuré and the festival of events held there each summer. Ten years later the Foundation played a key role in the donation of the Prieuré to Donald MacJannet’s alma mater, Tufts University. Today, as the Tufts European Center, the Prieuré provides Tufts students from the U.S. with a six-week summer program of classes, trips and a French home immersion experience, much as the MacJannets would have done.

Today Foundation’s mission is to actively promote and support global citizenship and cultural exchange. We promote cultural immersion and exchange via three key initiatives: First, we provide needed financial scholarships for deserving university students to attend the Tufts University European Center in Talloires, France. Second, we support of Les Amis du Prieuré, which hosts a summer lecture and concert series and offers scholarships for high school students to master English as a second language. And finally, we support scholarships endowed by Donald and Charlotte MacJannet that enable deserving international graduate students to attend the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy as MacJannet Fellows.

The Foundation also actively promotes global citizenship and volunteerism efforts through its support of the MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship, now in its seventh consecutive year. The MacJannet Prize recognizes exceptional student community engagement initiatives from more than 320 universities in 72 countries represented in the Talloires Network of global universities. In 2014, this award received more than 60 nominations from 48 universities in 22 countries. Members of the selection committee selected the top three winners from Canada, India and South Africa.

The people who have participated in these endeavors over the past 90 years belong to a growing global community of citizens who share certain humanitarian ideals. Thank you for joining this Linked-In network, which we hope will become a central networking and community discussion facility together with our website virtual library (MacJannet.org), our Facebook group (MacJannet Community, featuring photographs posted by our community), and our collection of historic photos and documents maintained by Tufts University (http://dca.lib.tufts.edu/features/macjannet/explorations.html).

How did you become part of this unique realm? Please share your story by posting it here. Welcome!