Talent is everywhere. Opportunity isn't — yet.
We started with one conviction: every child, regardless of their family's finances, deserves a fair shot at a great education.
Our story
The Equal Education Foundation is the international continuation of Fundacja Równa Pomoc w Edukacji, founded in Poland. What began as a way to give Polish students free access to high-quality online courses has grown into a mission that crosses borders.
Private tutoring and paid online courses have quietly become a deciding factor in how far a student can go. For families with limited means, that cost puts the best learning out of reach. We exist to close that gap.
Today we operate in Poland, the United States, South Korea, Armenia, Pakistan, and Spain, partnering with schools, social services, and leading education platforms to put the right resources in the hands of the students who need them most.
Our mission
To provide free access to high-quality online courses for students from low-income families — leveling educational opportunity so that talent, not income, decides a student's future.
- Free, high-quality online courses
- Built with trusted education partners
- Reaching students through schools & social services
The foundation was started by secondary school students.
In 2025 a group of students at Warsaw secondary schools decided that the inequality they could see in their own classrooms did not have to wait for the education system to reform itself. At one desk sits a student taking private lessons at a hundred and fifty zloty an hour. At the next sits a student with the same ability whose family cannot pay for them.
After two years that is no longer a difference in access. It is a difference in results, and then in universities, careers, and income.
Rather than build our own platform, we did something simpler. Good online courses already existed. The problem was never their quality, it was their price. So we persuaded the people who make them to donate access, and we took on the work of getting that access to students who genuinely need it, through schools, social services, and the organizations that already know these families.
Since February 2026 we have supported 1,100 students in Poland.
In May 2026 we received the Golden Wolf, the highest award of the Zwolnieni z Teorii olympiad, in the Charitable Collection category.
Then the messages started arriving from young people in other countries, asking whether they could do the same thing where they live. It turned out they could. The model is light enough that a student can open a branch in their own country with no budget at all. They need to persuade local education platforms, and reach the institutions already working with families in difficulty.
Since July 2026 branches have been opening across the United States, South Korea, Armenia, Pakistan, and Spain.
We have not changed the conviction we started with. Talent is distributed equally. Access to support is not.
A simple model, run with care
Three steps, each built around trust — in our partners, and in the people who reach students every day.
Free courses
We fund full scholarships to high-quality online courses — so cost is never the reason a student misses out.
Built with trusted partners
We don't build courses alone. We work with established learning platforms and delivery partners we trust.
Reaching students
We reach students through the people who already know them — their schools and local social services.
The people behind the foundation
Our founding team in Poland, with regional teams forming across the United States, South Korea, Armenia, Pakistan, and Spain.
Jerzy Kalina
Foundation President
Has taught mathematics publicly since he was fifteen. He wrote the textbook Lemat: intuicja, published by the Polish Institute of Education, and built MathWise, a mathematics learning platform used by around eight thousand students. He studies at AGH University.
He started the foundation because years of teaching showed him the same pattern over and over: capable students gave up on extra study not because they were struggling with it, but because their parents could not afford it.
At the foundation he is responsible for strategy, international growth, and mentoring country leads.
MathWise sp. z o.o., whose sole board member is Jerzy Kalina, the foundation's president, donates course access to the foundation under a documented in-kind donation agreement. The foundation makes no payments to MathWise.
Nela Wiśniewska
Project Coordinator
Julia Arciszewska
Media
Lila Kłosowska
Media
Szymon Kowalski
Partnerships
Ola Kozakiewicz
Partnerships
Ania Jeżewska
Social Services Liaison
Veronika Sidorkova
Fundraising
The paperwork, in the open
What we are, how we are governed, and what we did with what we were given.
Awards & honors
We're proud that our work has been recognized — but the real reward is the students it reaches.
Golden Wolf 2026
Our project was honored with the Golden Wolf 2026 award for an outstanding initiative in the “Charitable Collection 2026” category. The recognition confirms that leveling educational opportunities has real, measurable significance.
Warsaw · 28 May 2026
