We offer social services that aim to support families with immigration experience in finding their way around the Czech education system. For children and young people, we run Czech language courses of diverse formats, specializations, and levels. We also offer volunteer support (e.g., extra classes) and various types of free-time and community activities. For parents, we run the Do školy společně portal, where they can find useful information about the Czech education system, tips, and tools for dealing with real-life situations.
Schools with multilingual children and students are offered methodological support, counseling, and training, including tailor-made seminars and teaching materials. For the teaching community, we run the Inclusive School portal, where all available information and materials on education and inclusion of multilingual children and young people are published.
We propose and advocate systemic measures that address in a conceptual, continuous, and appropriate way the educational needs of children and young people with insufficient knowledge of the Czech language and the needs of schools where they are educated, helping develop their potential.
Through information campaigns, we aim to convey the situation of people with immigration experience to the general public as well as to promote open dialogue, mutual understanding, and social cohesion.
We believe in an open and inclusive learning environment, where cultural and linguistic diversity is supported and welcome. Our vision is to ensure that all children, including students for whom the language of instruction in Czech schools is not their mother tongue, have equitable access to high-quality education in the Czech Republic and fully exploit their potential. We want to equip teachers with competencies, confidence, and tools to create a safe and inspiring environment for the inclusion and education of multilingual students, allowing them to develop their potential. We make sure that the needs of multilingual children, their teachers, and schools are noticed, heard, and dealt with. Together, we search for ways to make the Czech education system more accessible and fairer. We support equitable opportunities in education.
Multilingual children are all children – students – whose mother tongue is not Czech. In the Czech education system, these children are most commonly referred to as children with a different mother tongue (Czech abbreviation: OMJ). They may or may not have their own migration experience, and they grow up partly in a different cultural environment, including within the Czech Republic. Some of them came to the Czech Republic during their studies from a country where Czech as a language of instruction is unknown, and now the students are becoming part of the education system. There might also be children born in the Czech Republic, growing up in families where languages other than the language of instruction are spoken, who might have Czech or foreign citizenship. Children of Czech origins who lived abroad for a long time and thus received no formal education in Czech face a similar challenge.
These children’s educational journey is often affected by insufficient knowledge of Czech throughout the entire educational process. We recognize that learning Czech is a long-term process during which children face a number of challenges. It is therefore important to identify these challenges, help them understand them, and at the same time show them specific options and strategies for overcoming them together.
At META we use several terms that refer to multilingual children (according to the context and the addressee): children with other mother tongues, children with migration background, children from diverse backgrounds,, children with Czech as a second language.
On this website, we use the term “foreigner” for the sake of searchability of our services.
Our work is possible thanks to support from public sources, the private sector, and individual donors. Do you find our activities appealing? If you decide to support us financially, you will help children who are facing challenges in their education due to the language barrier, as well as their teachers and classmates.
We support migrants in achieving appropriate education and successfully integrating into society.
We are professionals with a human touch. With us, you will be able to make use of your creativity, ideas, and self-realization, which will boost your professional and personal development.
The history of META dates back to before it was even founded in 2004. At the turn of the millennium, the founders of the organization work as social workers in refugee camps, where they have been long observing a lack of information, opportunities, interest, and motivation for the education of refugee children after compulsory education.
Their parents are usually dealing with more “urgent” matters (asylum procedures, finding a place to live, health, financial needs…), they do not have the capacity to take care of education, and most importantly, they do not have enough information (and do not know where to look for it) about how the Czech education system works and that their children can become part of it.
Over the years, we have evolved from offering a limited number of services for immigrants to providing a full package of services, reaching a broader range of clients. We have grown from 5 employees in 2006 to 49 in 2025.
After less than 2 years since the foundation (December 2004) we are ready to start! On Friday, September 1st we are opening the Counseling and Information Center for Young Immigrants. We provide educational support – counseling, extra classes, Czech language courses. We conduct a Survey of the Needs and Barriers of Young Immigrants in Their Access to Education in order to adjust our services accordingly.
Team size: We are a handful (5).
We start to offer our services to elementary school teachers and organize the first courses and workshops for them. We start working on the Inclusive School information web portal and launch it towards the end of the year. We prepare courses for female kindergarten teachers and students of faculties of education. We create the first concept describing the work of teaching assistants for students with other mother tongues, which will later result in the concept of bilingual teaching assistants.
Team size: 11 people
We publish the first methodology for working with children with other mother tongues: Students with Other Mother Tongues in Czech Schools. This marks the beginning of our abundant publishing activities with other methodologies to follow, e.g., for kindergartens, high schools, or bilingual teaching assistants. For the next 8 years, we move to an office in Ječná Street, rented to us by the Prague 2 Municipality in the “municipal interest”.
Team size: 11 people
In March, we launch our first large-scale project aimed at providing training and qualifications as teaching assistants for immigrants. In September, the very first 14 bilingual teaching assistants start working at different elementary schools and kindergartens in Prague. We keep developing the concept of bilingual teaching assistants, devoting a lot of effort to this topic in the subsequent years (by 2024, we will have trained 181 bilingual teaching assistants). We organize our first international conference held at Goethe-Institut entitled Approaches to the Integration of Foreigners to Schools – Saxon inspiration.
Team size: 18 people
We publish our first policy paper (which we have been working on for 9 months in collaboration with an inter-ministerial platform composed of nearly 100 experts) and present it to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports at a round table on The Education and Inclusion of Foreign Students – A Perspective for Future Development. Advocacy becomes an integral part of our activities. We launch the first round of training for our regional associates, which allows us to expand our activities to 8 regions in the following year.
Team size: 24 people
We create the first online tool for teaching Czech as a second language – the Čeština 2 e-learning tool for younger children (including non-readers). Based on the Swedish original, we adapt the methodology for the Czech environment and publish it under the title Hello Czech Republic – doma v nové zemi (Feel at Home in a New Country). It is intended for elementary and high school teachers and provides insights into topics such as refugees, identity, prejudices, stereotypes, etc. Following the recent “first anti-immigration panic”, we are about to face our first media storm, accompanied by many hateful messages from Czech citizens.
Team size: 19 people
Thanks to the support from the Velux and Villum Foundations, we design and create the One-Year Preparatory Course for High School Studies (later named Česky levou zadní – Czech Made Easy). In September, the course starts its first season with two classes for a total of 30 students (later the number is reduced to 24). It is intended for young people with other mother tongues who have completed compulsory education in their country of origin and whose opportunities to learn Czech to successfully pass the entrance exams are limited or non-existent. The course is expected to significantly increase these opportunities. The so-called Inclusive Amendment comes into force in the Czech Republic, but its implementation is rather delayed, and we work hard to make this better. We prepare the first courses for high school teachers.
Team size: 24 people
The foundations of META’s publishing had been laid earlier, but 2018 can truly be called a year of publishing. In addition to four methodological publications, we publish our first Czech language textbook, Levou zadní (Czech Made Easy). It is tested by students of our one-year preparatory course and is the first Czech language textbook for teenagers on the market. We continue engaging in advocacy activities, as we publish and distribute (and actively discuss this issue with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports) our second policy paper, Strategic Goals for the Development of Language Training for 2018–2020.
Team size: 35 people
We start to focus more closely on psychosocial support for children and students with other mother tongues, regarding this as a prerequisite for their successful education. We publish a Guide for Counseling Centers Working with Children and Students with Other Mother Tongues (our first methodological publication whose target audience includes people outside of schools). We move to new premises in Praha 3, finally having all our services (and colleagues) under one roof once again. But soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic strikes, and our offices will remain empty for many months. The following year spent online transforms our services and introduces new tools (or, more precisely, forces us to search for and use them).
Team size: 34 people
A documentary film entitled Jednotřídka (One-Room School) about our One-Year Preparatory Course is made, directed by Petr Hátle, aired by Czech Television. It covers the year when 7 (out of 10) months of the course are held online (not exactly a piece of cake for someone who is just starting to learn a language…). The documentary is selected for the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. Our #JakoTy campaign, focusing on the situation of young people with different roots living in the Czech Republic, reaches millions of people (6,567,806) on social media. The campaign wins the Fénix Content Marketing Award in the Non-Profit Sector category.
Team size: 35 people
The COVID-19 pandemic is over, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine starts, and many war refugees come to the Czech Republic. Starting in February, dealing with an unprecedented number of school-age children who need our help becomes our priority number one. Our team significantly grows (in particular, we are joined by new Ukrainian colleagues), and we provide crisis services – we offer adaptation groups, coordinate children’s playrooms at Regional Centers for Help and Assistance to Ukraine (KACPUs), provide psychological support, and offer assistance at the Větrník and Hostivař dormitories, where vulnerable groups of refugees are staying.
We are involved in finding systemic solutions to the refugee situation. For example, we are a member of a strategic group at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and a member of a permanent committee at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. We issue 14 systemic recommendations. We launch an online learning platform called Levou zadní online (Czech Made Easy Online) in response to the lack of places in Czech language courses. The e-learning platform offers tools for group teaching, including methodological sheets for teachers. It also includes a career module. We change our name (the part after the dash).
Team size: 49 people
In cooperation with UNICEF and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, we launch two information campaigns for Ukrainian refugees – Život je teď (Life Is Now) for young people aged 15+ and Do školy společně (Together in School) for parents. We launch the doskolyspolecne.cz information portal, initially intended for Ukrainian parents only, adding three more language versions (English, Vietnamese, and Russian) in the following year. In September, our partner organizations launch a one-year preparatory course called Česky levou zadní (Czech Made Easy) in the South Moravian and Pilsen Regions.
Team size: 47 people
We launch the participatory campaign Náš hlas (Our Voice), embedding empowerment and participation more firmly into the integral principles of our work. We organize a round table for representatives of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Czech Republic. We submit legislative proposals for the amendment to the Education Act, and they are approved by the government in October. We publish and launch the second volume of the Levou zadní textbook (Czech Made Easy). We pass organizational audits by Gov Lab and UNICEF, and the results are extremely satisfactory.
Team size: 46 people
Our services are well-developed and systematically organized, and we have a team of professionals whose expertise is widely recognized. Due to the high demand for our services in recent years (which has continued to date), we have undergone a transformation (referred to as METAmorphosis), and our management system is working effectively. Currently, we are (once again) facing a shortage of funds from the state budget and the unwillingness of private donors to keep standing in for the state.
Team size: 42 people
Take a look at our long-term projects that aim to support children, families, and teachers, as well as information campaigns targeted at the general public.
Download our annual reports and reviews – they contain an overview of the organization’s financial statements and activities and the impact of our work.
