Donald and Charlotte MacJannet were 20th-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!
