Financial goals

To even begin to reach to main goal of the school, we had to overcome a major obstacle: the financial limits of most would-be participants. Most other similar schools are simply inaccessible to such students, because on the one hand their fees are unaffordable (and the grants for them too scarce), while on the other hand the simple expenses caused by everyday life during school (lodging, eating, etc.) are a barrier to their participation.

To remedy this situation we hoped to be able to take two drastic steps: (i) not to ask for any fee from any student (in the terms of other schools, this means that all students would have a grant), and (ii) help as many eastern students as possible with the "on-site living expenses", by providing a (further) grant covering hostel, meals and/or travel expenses.

This would permit both to augment the number of eastern participants in absolute numbers, and to allow participants from the economically most disadvantaged countries to participate (Albania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, etc.).

We were able to achieve this goal (i) by keeping all costs as low as possible and (ii) through the generosity of HESP and GLOW in providing external support to meet the remaining costs.

Minimisation of costs

Four factors made it possible to reduce the costs of the school:

1. the University of Olomouc offered free teaching facilities, as well as hostel and meals at extremely low prices (compared with all other offers), matching the local student-prices.
2. the teachers were all young professionals ready to forego any payment, teaching on a voluntary bases. Furthermore, teachers agreed to keep their travelling costs as low as possible.
3. the teachers were able to make use of facilities of their home institutions for various organisational tasks (computer and eMail facilities, certain postage costs, etc.).
4. remaining organisational costs were reduced to a minimum, in that the teachers devoted their own time and energy to off-site organisation, while the on-site organisation was provided by a member of the Olomouc Philosophical faculty, Ludmila Veselovska, assisted by a local student.

In all points the organisation worked according to plan, with a perfect collaboration of teachers and Universities. This enabled us to organise a two-week summer school for about 80 persons with a budget under 14.000$, including reimbursement of travel expenses for 46 individuals.

External fundings

Remaining expenses were divided among teacher's expenses, student grants and incidental costs on-site.

External funding was found to cover these thanks to the generosity of GLOW (a European Linguistic Association) which covered the teacher's expenses, and HESP (which covered student costs and incidental expenses).

Student grants

As a result, we were able to offer a free school to all 70 participants, and on top of this, offer a reimbursment of travel expenses to 38 (non-Czech) Eastern students, and a reimbursment of "on-site living expenses" to 47 Eastern students (out of a total of 49 eastern students), reaching the goal we had set ourselves, of making the school (financially) accessible to eastern students of all origins.