Proof that heritage work matters: Jana Nahodilová’s medal of honor

On the weekends you do your best for your community, you volunteer your time and hard work – and during the week you still attend your regular job. Or maybe you focus all of your time on your heritage community. Either way, you do it just because it is the right thing to do, the thing that helps so many people around you. You do not expect anything from it. Probably people do not even see all that you do.

However, sometimes the hard work can show: we would like to congratulate our team member Jana Nahodilová, originally from the Czech Republic, who recently received a medal from the Czech Prime Minister for her long term support of the Czech community in the United Kingdom and for her extraordinary contribution to the development of the Czech language, culture, and historical heritage abroad.

And what is Jana's long term contribution? Jana is not only member of the FOHLC Europe team, she started her own Czech and Slovak school "Okénko" in London more than 13 years ago. She is also the head of BCSA British Czech and Slovak Association, an organization that connects the U.K., Czech Republic and Slovak Republic together through history, arts, literature, economics, science, and contemporary socio-political matters. Jana is part of The Association of Czech and Slovak Schools in the U.K. and Ireland, which is an organization that supports Czech and Slovak supplementary and mainstream schools. She clearly shows dedication to her language community.

At 2025 Czech Schools Abroad conference in Prague, Jana launched Okénko's new textbook for multilingual children who are learning Czech as an heritage language. The book is for children in first grade – surely there will be more grades to come!

Thank you, Jana, for all your hard work!