| about us
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About us
Childtuition Foundation is a Dutch Charitable Trust. It's official name is Stichting Childtuition. The Childtuition Foundation was initiated by a group of individuals with strong backgrounds in multimedia, education and linguistics.
The board consists of:
former Boardmember:
Adviser:
Producer/Project Leader:
Dr. N. (Nico) Nobel (1933) studied Law at Leiden University. He subsequently worked in Amsterdam as a tax-lawyer and as a publisher of articles and newsletters about Dutch and international tax law.
As a student, Nobel became friends with an Indian boy studying at Cambridge University. This friend invited him to tour India after finishing his studies, and he accepted. In 1958 he completed a 7 month tour through India by car, nearly covering the entire country. Having made a number of new friends, he returned often for short visits. As a result, Nobel regards India as a second home, and himself as half-Dutch and half-Indian.
During his many stays, Nobel saw not only attractive areas of the country but also the misery in which a large portion of the population still lives. These are conditions of life that, fortunately, no longer exist in Western society. Nobel was inspired to make a difference, and began organizing charitable activities in India after his retirement. With some money of his own he founded a Charitable Trust that, after a few years, also received support from CORDAID, a large, semi-public charitable organization in the Netherlands as well as from Dutch and Indian Rotary Clubs. From 1998 to 2005, the Trust financially supported several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for charitable work to help prostitutes and their children, HIV-AIDS wards, leprosy colonies, orphanages, cataract operations for the blind, and many other important causes.
In addition to managing the Charitable Trust, Nobel maintained continuous contact with Indian NGO workers, also traveling to meet them and see their work up close. Due to his age and the increasing demands of this work, he stopped at the end of 2005, handing over the responsibility to two Dutch couples. One of the couples is Jasper Kappen and his wife Flora.
Since 2006, Nobel has focused on the activities of the Childtuition Foundation.
Prof. M.M. (Thijs) Chanowski (1930) began his career as a musician and writer, but turned to the burgeoning medium of television in the 1950s. As a producer he created a famous children's television show called "Fabeltjeskrant", which remains a household name in the Netherlands. In the early 1970s he became involved in the development of digital media. The Philips Natlab hired him as an advisor to the team that developed the Laserdisc, the predecessor of the current DVD.
In 1972, Chanowski created the world's first interactive Laser Disc. And in the following years he made abundant use of new technologies for producing and editing movies, which he made on various subjects. For one of these he earned the prestigious Prix d'Italia award. More and more, though, his work shifted to the creation of interactive environments.
This new focus spurred Chanowski to found MediaLab BV, a company in the field of "Knowledge Mining", in 1990. Five years later he was appointed professor of multimedia at the University of Amsterdam.
Another company, Medialab Solutions BV, was founded in 2000 together with Bas Zwaan and Peter Groenen. The "Aquabrowser" was introduced to the international community of libraries as a next-generation search engine. The browser is now used by 80% of the libraries in the Netherlands.
Chanowski has also been involved in various projects for innovation in education and was until 2012 a board member of the Childtuition foundation.
M.E. (Maaike) Chanowski, LLM, (1978) started her professional career at the University of Amsterdam studying law. Having a broad interest, she also studied at the conservatory (classical singing) and at a real estate academy but after a few years, she returned to the University where she obtained her Master of Laws. Maaike started working as a freelancer, providing legal advice concerning intellectual property rights related issues. After working for an international video game publisher on a freelance basis, she decided to joined this company as an in-house legal counsel where she was responsible for setting up the legal department, conducting contract negotiations and providing legal advice. Through working closely with the developers, producers and marketers, she obtained first hand insight in the creation of videogames and she developed a software (ICT/IT rights) related expertise next to her initial intellectual property rights background.
Over the last years, Maaike has worked both as a freelancer and as an in-house legal counsel for several companies (providing different legal services) and helped companies with setting up / organizing a legal department, contract negotiation and legal and more commercial advise. She currently works as Legal Manager for the largest full-service internet agency of the Netherlands.
Maaike has supported several charities over the years, specifically those that concentrate on helping animals. She is very enthusiastic to be able to have this wonderful new opportunity to give back. Picking up where her father left off, she is proud to join Childtuition as a member of the board in 2012.
Drs. Ir. J. (Jasper) Kappen (1971) started his career as a process engineer at DSM after having studied chemical engineering at the Technical University of Delft. He then switched to become a logistics project manager at DSM and apart of that started to give training in logistics and change management. He came to the conclusion that he liked the training aspect more and more and consequently became a fulltime trainer. Until today he is still a freelance logistics trainer through Echelon University. In 2004 he decided to study Medicine at Rotterdam University and in 2007 he finished his theoretical studies there. He is now doing a two years practical course at the University hospital to become a fully qualified physician.
In 2003 - 2004 Jasper and his wife Flora worked a year as volunteers for Maharogi Sewa Samiti, the organization that was founded by Murlidar Devidas (Baba) Amte in 1951 and which has now grown into a widely known charitable institute comprising a colony of more than 2000 handicapped people, called "Anandwan" and located at Warora, a hospital and social center for tribal people, called "Lok Biradari Prakalp" and located at Hemalkasa, and a social and agricultural project located at Somnath. During their stay Jasper and Flora realized a project for the curing and rehabilitation of lepers and to supply training and housing for handicapped people, tribal people and youth with a poor background. They also raised funds for this project in India, Europe and the USA. Their work as volunteers at Maharogi Sewa Samiti brought them into close personal contact with Baba Amte and his sons Vikas and Prakash. Prakash and his wife Mandakini are physicians, who in 1973 founded a hospital and social center for tribal people at Hemalkasa in the middle of a large inaccessible forest area in central India. In the hospital nowadays more than 40.000 tribal people receive medical treatment annually. They come from 1000 small villages in an area with a radius of 150 km.
Since 1974 the center at Hemalkasa also comprises a school for 500 tribal children. It is at this school where our programs will be tested and Jasper acts as the liaison in this.
Dr. Peter Edelenbos began his career as a teacher in primary and secondary education. At university he specialized in educational research, policy studies and curriculum development. He gained a substantial amount of experience in the field, working as junior and senior researcher for over 20 years at the University of Groningen's Institute for Educational Research. In addition, he was a consultant to the Netherlands Language Academy for over 10 years. At present he works as an independent consultant with his own firm “Effective Educational Language Services” (E²LS).
Edelenbos has extensive experience conducting Europe-wide educational projects funded by the European Commission (Comenius and Lingua). His main interests are foreign language learning and teaching, innovations, assessments of programs and educational systems, internationalization of education, innovative teaching programs at primary and secondary level, foreign exchange programs, effectiveness of education and teacher training. He has written about these subjects in reports, books and national and internationally acclaimed academic journals.
Edelenbos now works with the Childtuition foundation as an adviser.
Jeroen van der Ent began his career as a key account manager at an international trading company after having studied International Business and Languages. He was quickly convinced that the internet was a way more exciting playground and taught himself webdevelopment and webdesign. He started as a developer at YACHT ICT which trained him further in webdevelopment and design. He then worked for 7 years at the international publisher Kluwer B.V. as a webdeveloper/designer where he gained a lot of experience with web related projects and followed many courses in web techniques.
During his work at Kluwer he also began his study of Communication and Multimedia Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. He then joined Childtuition as an interaction designer and developer. In 2008 he visited India to do user tests in various tribal villages in the jungle of India and multiple slum schools in Mumbai. In 2010 Jeroen van der Ent and his wife have also started their own company Entwerpen for corporate identities, interior architecture and multimedia projects.
In 2012 Jeroen co-founded the internet publishing platform Checkzis
At present he is active as producer and leading the team of developers and designers at Childtuition to create the flex/flash based software and doing research on unaided multimedia learning. His focus is on creating an entertaining user experience for the children that will keep them motivated to keep learning new material that is adjusted to their own environment.