The Bernard van Leer Foundation funds and shares knowledge about work in early childhood development. The foundation was established in 1949 and is based in the Netherlands.
The mission of the Bernard van Leer Foundation is to improve opportunities for children up to age 8 who are growing up in socially and economically difficult circumstances. Its sees this both as a valuable end in itself and as a long-term means to promoting more cohesive, considerate and creative societies with equal opportunities and rights for all.
Bernard van Leer Foundation grantmaking works primarily through supporting programmes implemented by local partners in selected countries and publishing free publications. Its partners include public, private and community-based organisations. Working through partnerships is intended to build local capacity, promote innovation and flexibility, and help to ensure that the work we fund is culturally and contextually appropriate.
Since 2009 the foundation pursues three strategic goals:
- Taking quality early learning to scale
- Reducing violence in young children's lives
- Improving young children's physical environments
The foundation focuses its grantmaking on selected countries: Brazil, India, Israel, The Netherlands, Peru, Tanzania, Turkey and Uganda and has a regional approach within the European Union.
Until 2012, the foundation will also be working in the Caribbean, Mexico and South Africa on the issue areas defined by its previous strategic plan: Strengthening the care environment, Successful transitions from home to school, and Social inclusion and respect for diversity.
The foundation's income is derived from the bequest of Bernard van Leer, a Dutch industrialist and philanthropist who lived from 1883 to 1958, and made his fortune from the packaging company he founded in 1919, Royal Packaging Industries Van Leer. An amateur circus-master, Bernard van Leer has been described by a biographer as an "indefatigable businessman, who subordinated everything and everyone to his business interests; a driven individualist, a quick thinker, restive and irritating".
After Bernard van Leer's death in 1958, the foundation was given a clearer organisation and focus by his son Oscar van Leer, described as "intelligent, quick-witted and a gifted pianist". From 1964 the Bernard van Leer Foundation focused on young children, primary education and youth, and since 1980 has concentrated exclusively on disadvantaged young children. It funded its first international project, in Jamaica, in 1966.
The foundation's income is channelled through the Van Leer Group Foundation, which also funds the Jerusalem Film Centre and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. The members of the Van Leer Group Foundation's governing council also form the board of trustees of the Bernard van Leer Foundation. In the late 1990s, the Van Leer Group Foundation sold Royal Packaging Industries Van Leer, which it had fully owned, and now derives its income from a venture capital company and a global portfolio of equities, securities and property.
Its international grantmaking activities over several decades are credited with having helped to raise early childhood on the political agenda, notably through contributions to the development of the early childhood care and education sector in Jamaica and the Preschool Education Project in Kenya.
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