Green Elephant Foundation / Fundacja Zielony Slon

The idea of lifelong learning constitutes main focus of the Fundacja "Zielony Słoń" / Green Elephant Foundation. The Foundation has been established in 2012 in Lublin ( 2023 European Youth Capital ).

We believe the need for self development is one of the basic human needs and a primary factor driving the development of human civilization. We make people learn and help them stay mentally active.

The founder, Mr. Jacek Rębacz is an author of several novels being published by the biggest Polish publishing houses. This is also the reason we also support and promote literacy, readership and help to protect valuable books.

We focus on educational activities aimed to face social problems like violence, discrimination, racism, hate speech, problem of inadequate level of education, problems which the youths encounter while starting their adventure on the labor market, projects aimed for raising entrepreneurial and civic awareness, and projects on ecological awareness, projects focused on sustainable development, Green Policies, reduction of the human footprint.

We also implement projects aimed to set work placements abroad, support vocational education of young people, create online educational products and solutions. We are implementing projects with individual career development, vocational courses and traineeships on national level, aimed at adult unemployed, disabled people and recently embracing also the Ukrainian refugees of all ages.

We organized and led over 20+ international educational events, both youth exchanges and training courses, minimum a week-long, in Poland but also events located in Slovakia, Malta, Georgia and online. These events embraced approximately 500-600 youth workers and young people from all over EU and the partner countries, under various financing programes.

We have supported students of our partner vocational schools in Poland by sending them to traineeships under Erasmus+ VET projects to Spain, Italy and Portugal. We have embraced over 70 students of vocational schools in these projects.

We have involved over 300 people both youths and older participants, into foreign educational events organized by foreign entities, under Erasmus+ youth and adult sector.

Within our national projects, we have provided career consultancy, vocational courses and paid workplacements for 30 unemployed people in the region of Lubelskie under RPO WL (RPLU.10.04.00-06-0029/18) and for 50 disabled people (national range, „(Od)Ważni na starcie!” ABS/000004/03/D).

We have also involved 100-200 youths from Lithuania and Ukraine into the bilateral youth exchange project in Poland which we hosted in the rural areas of eastern Lubelskie region.

Recently we have been implementing Erasmus+ partnership project led by a Latvian beneficiary, aimed at bringing personal support, welcoming services and Polish language courses to 100 Ukrainian refugees in Poland.