Our motivation

Learning a new language enhances your educational and career development, cultivates new friendships, broadens your mind, and gives you the ability to fully appreciate and understand this world in which we live.

With more people studying languages in the world, we as a global community are better equipped in bridging the gaps in business, cultural understanding and acceptance of foreign nations.

A second language can be a life changing skill, opening up opportunities which otherwise may never have presented themselves.

As the data in Spanish in figures demonstrate, Spanish has as many as 500 million speakers worldwide, is the official language in twenty one countries globally and is a second or third language in many more. By learning another language and its culture, we help ourselves to learn what makes other people tick. What's more, employees who can communicate and do business in Spanish are a strategic asset to a growing number of companies.

The Foundation don Quijote Scholarship Programme, established in 2003, aims to:

• Reward educational institutions that go the extra mile to encourage their students to study languages, and Spanish in particular.
• Create a forum through which educational institutions with strong language programmes share great ideas.
• Provide an opportunity for 20 motivated, deserving students (as chosen by their institutions) to experience study abroad.

Immersion in a foreign culture can teach you about others and yourself. We want to give 20 deserving students the chance to experience in-country language learning where they can study Spanish, live the culture, learn about who they are and perhaps learn where they’d like to be.