About us
The Pai Lennart Schmidt Fund (FPLS) was established in 2005 as a Fund under the patronage of the Belgian King Baudouin Foundation. It is independent of all religions. The Fund supports the meeting of young people/adolescents from different religious and cultural backgrounds. It promotes the discovery of common values, openness, exchange, mutual tolerance and respect. The Fund was set up in memory of Pai Lennart Schmidt by his parents.
Pai Lennart Schmidt was born in August 1991 in Frankfurt/Germany and died in a car accident in Brussels in March 2005. From early on, the thirteen year-old sought the human element when he met other people, irrespective of their religion, creed or culture. He was inquisitive and open to other ways of living, religions and cultures – without giving up his own identity. Thus, the Fund promotes openness, tolerance, respect and universal human values by facilitating meetings of young people.
The Pai Lennart Schmidt Fund (FPLS) supports inter-culturally oriented projects aimed at enhancing tolerance and mutual understanding between adolescents. It pays particular attention to sustainable inter-conmmunity approaches and initatives which are either innovative or aim at broader replication. FPLS focuses mainly on the region of Brussels, but does not exclude projects with a broader remit. Given its experience of over ten years of support of innovative projects in Brussels and Belgium, it is the hope of the funders that some of the projects might serve as good inspiration for other actors, also outside Belgium.
Promotion of respect and tolerance
Projects since 2023
New approach for projects since 2023
In 2023, the Fund changed its approach of funding: Instead of launching calls for proposals and spreading its funds more or less evenly among selected projects in Belgium, it concentrated on one single project in Germany: to support the nature conservation project "Elmeere"(www.elmeere.de) in the German island of Föhr in the North Sea.
In 2023 and 2025 Elmeere received each time 10 000 Euros for its work. If funds allow, the intention is to sponsor Elmeere another three times (2027, 2029 and 2031) with the same amount so that it can buy 5 hectars of land to use for nature protection purposes.
Why suddenly Föhr? Pai Schmidt spent all his summer holidays with his family in Föhr. He loved the island, he loved to watch animals and birds, he loved the sea and the sun there. In addition, the family moved back to Germany and also wanted to have a German institution profit from its activit.
Projects supported so far
Projects 2018
2018-C5810090-210741 - Diversité convictionnelle et philosophique à Anderlecht - Administration Communale d´Anderlecht - 4500 Euros
2018-C5810090-210742 - Pairs et repères: Pour mieux vivre la Bruxelles de demain - European Peer Training Organisation - 4500 Euros
2018-C5810090-210754 - Junior Vox Pacis - Rama Youth Network asbl
Projects 2018
2018-C5810090-210741 - Diversité convictionnelle et philosophique à Anderlecht - Administration Communale d´Anderlecht - 4500 Euros
2018-C5810090-210742 - Pairs et repères: Pour mieux vivre la Bruxelles de demain - European Peer Training Organisation - 4500 Euros
2018-C5810090-210754 - Junior Vox Pacis - Rama Youth Network asbl
Projects 2016
2016-C5810090-205172 - Curghem, une histoire de migrations - Switch asbl - 5000 Euros
2016-C5810090-205171 - Notre charte de la tolérance - Administration communale de Bernissart - 2000 Euros
2016-C5810090-205170 - Récit sans frontières - AMO Neder-over-Heembeek asbl - 5000 Euros
2016-C5810090-205172 - Intégration à travers le sport et soutien scolaire - JC Royal Crossing Clus Schaerbeek asbl - 3500 Euros
Projects 2014
2014-C5810090-202232 - Jongeren schreijven en bezorgen wenskaarten ter gelegenheid van festen - Orbit nzw - 3000 Euros
2014-C5810090-202231 - Jeunes Voix-Voies de Jeunes - Centre Alameda (programme I.T.Ouch) - 3000 Euros
2014-C5810090-202230 - Ensemble pour la tolérance - Administration communale de Bernissart - 3000 Euros
2014-C5810090-102550 - Basketball Camp for interreligious action and dialogue - Serve the City - 1500 Euros
Projects 2012
2012-810090-100265 - Au Bout de Conte - Production Associeés asbl - 5500 Euros
2012-810090-100262 - Ecole de Dialogues - El Kalima asbl - 1500 Euros
Projects 2006-2010
When the Fund was set up in 2005, no institutional approaches existed outside schools to bring youth from diverging “convictional” (i.e. religious and laicistic) backgrounds together in a structured and sustainable way. In order to facilitate inter-convictional exchanges and experiences between adolescents, FPLS thus decided to develop such activities pro-actively, in cooperation with interested partners active in faith-oriented youth work in Brussels. In its early years, FPLS also tested these ideas in several events that it organised with young people of different convictions between 2007 and 2010. After 2010, this approach was changed into open calls for projects, published and administered by the Fondation Roi Baudouin for the Fonds Pai Lennart Schmidt.