The Varkey Foundation headquarters are in London, UK and we are proud to work alongside many high profile organisations, governments and institutes which share our vision and values.
Europe is an important focus of the Varkey Foundation's advocacy, campaigning and research and is also home to many of our key partners.
Programmes
Through our Challenge Fund, our grant-making programme, we supported small organisations with big ideas for the future of education in Europe. They included groups like Invincible Me, a UK charity working to improve mental health in schools and the Slovakian NGO Zivica, which works to improve leadership in education.
Global Teacher Prize and National Teacher Prizes
We think that the best teachers in Europe should be making headlines in their countries – and beyond. Today, The Varkey Foundation celebrates the greatest teaching in the region through the US$1 million Global Teacher Prize and support for National Teacher Prizes in Czech Republic, Georgia, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
Andria Zafirakou from London, UK was the winner of the Global Teacher Prize 2018. Andria has spent her 12-year career at Alperton Community secondary school in Brent, teaching some of the most disadvantaged, ethnically diverse children in the country. Our 2018 Global Teacher Prize finalists also included remarkable teachers from Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Serbia and Spain. All are teachers with extraordinary stories to tell, from the top UK footballer who became a PE teacher, to a Belgian teacher who offers free education to refugees in Africa via Skype and a teacher in Finland whose mathematics lessons are transforming results.
Policy & Research
We believe that ground-breaking research will enable us to address some of the biggest challenges in education in countries across Europe. Today, our global body of research includes data from 15 countries in the region, from economic heavyweights like France, Germany and the UK to educational powerhouses like Finland.
At the Varkey Foundation, we fundamentally believe in the power of bringing together groups of like-minded people to change education for the better. Today, top leaders and thinkers from Europe are represented in our Atlantis Group of former ministers of education and our Varkey Teacher Ambassador community – a network of some of the best educators in the world.
The Varkey Foundation is a UK-registered charity and our international headquarters are based in London. The Foundation’s Making Ghanaian Girls Great! project is funded by the UK government through DFID.