From scholarships to the Princess Grace Classical Dance Academy, and the Rainier III Music Academy in Monaco to wider work funding paediatric centres across France – helping over 1,500 sick children and their parents – the Fondation Princesse Grace has been tireless in its humanitarian efforts during 2021 and 2022.  

Established by the late Grace Kelly in 1964, the Princess Grace Foundation is now chaired by her eldest daughter, Princess Caroline of Hanover. She led the association’s annual board meeting earlier this week, which was an opportunity for the Princess Grace Foundation to take stock of its humanitarian and cultural accomplishments in 2021 and 2022, as well as look ahead to what is to come in the future. 

360,000 euros in aid for children in need 

In 2021, the foundation handed 360,000 euros of generous funds to 1,508 hospitalised children across 62 French healthcare establishments, including the CHU Chambéry pictured above. The money allowed the parents of ill children to be able to stay with them, a reassuring thing for parent and child alike.  

Several leisure activities were also subsidised by the Princess Grace Foundation, providing entertaining distractions for young in-patients, from writing workshops at the Gustave Roussy Institute in southern Paris to fun and cultural outings at the Costanzo Hospital in Nice. The foundation even helped provide a weekly horse-riding programme for teenagers hospitalised at the University Hospital of Tours. It has also been involved in financing a vast decoration program at paediatric departments of the Hospices Civils de Lyon, which brings together several general and specialised hospitals. 

In 2022, work continued across the association’s missions, and the Princess Grace Foundation was responsible for a new wall decoration in the paediatric surgery department of the Lapeyronie Hospital in Montpellier, as well as the family centre extension at the Yves le Foll Hospital at the Hospital of Saint-Brieuc, which in total came to 58,000 euros. 

More than two decades of support for paediatric centres 

This work is part of larger scale donations of 1.6 million euros made over the past twenty years. The Princess Grace Foundation’s help has assisted in modernising and expanding 16 parents’ houses, the latest being the renovation of the parents’ house at the University of Nancy Children’s Hospital, which was completed in October 2022.  

The foundation has also been subsidising three paediatric medical research laboratories for more than two decades: two at the Necker hospital in Paris and one at the Debré hospital in Paris. It devotes 300,000 euros each year for these causes. 

Scholarships and cultural endeavours  

On the cultural side, over 680,000 euros was distributed in 2021. Scholarships were handed out for the Princess Grace Classical Dance Academy and the Rainier III Music Academy, and grants were given to local associations, including the Bourse de la Découverte and the Coups de Coeur for high school students and young musicians. Additionally, it runs two Boutiques du Rocher, which support local craftsmen and women, and the Princess Grace Irish Library, an active literary and cultural centre in the Principality (9 Rue Princesse Marie de Lorraine).  

For more information on the Princess Grace Foundation and its work, please click here.  

Photo source: CHU Chambéry