Kacper Malinowski

Malinowski Kacper

Year the scholarship was awarded:

2023

Area of expertise

Science

In 2023, Kacper graduated with distinction from the Henryk Wieniawski Primary and Secondary Music School in Łódź. As a professional harpist, he has performed in more than 200 concerts and won 24 awards in music competitions across five countries. He was also a laureate of the Polish Olympiads in Music History (2021) and Civic Knowledge (2022). During the 2022–2023 academic year, he attended Des Moines Hoover High School in Iowa as a recipient of the U.S. Congress-funded FLEX scholarship. He graduated with distinction and became the first participant among more than 41,000 FLEX alumni to receive all 11 U.S. Department of State honors recognizing community engagement and humanitarian service, including the Foreign Service Award for completing over 200 hours of volunteer work.

In 2026, Kacper completed his third year at Minerva University, pursuing a double major in Law, Ethics, and Philosophy (College of Arts and Humanities) and Society, Government, and Politics (College of Social Sciences), with an additional concentration in Sustainability (College of Natural Sciences). With the support of the Foundation, he has studied in San Francisco, Taipei, Seoul, Buenos Aires, and Hyderabad. For the past two years, he has served as a Teaching Assistant for the courses Global History and Complex Systems. He has also completed research internships at Minerva University's Music, Health, and Wellbeing Lab (twice, in 2024 and 2025) and at Harvard University's Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory (2024). He has collaborated on projects with organizations including the Taipei City Government (2024), the San Francisco Chronicle (2023), Jóvenes por el Clima (since 2025), and the Philadelphia Peace Plaza Committee (2025–2026). In 2025, he served as Minerva University's Campus Director for the United Nations Millennium Fellowship.

Kacper's work focuses on education and the promotion of Polish culture through social impact initiatives. Since 2021, he has delivered more than 65 workshops on Polish music history and culture across four continents, reaching approximately 4,000 participants. Previously, as a Sustainable Development Ambassador with the United Nations Association – Poland, he led educational workshops on the UN 2030 Agenda for more than 700 high school students in Łódź (2020–2021). He is the founder of several social and charitable initiatives, including From Hoover Students for Ukrainians in Poland (2022), a two-day fundraising event organized at Des Moines Hoover High School to support Ukrainian war refugees in Poland, and Meet (2022), a series of seven public online discussions held during the COVID-19 pandemic featuring distinguished public figures such as Lech Wałęsa, Jolanta Kwaśniewska, Magdalena Środa, Marcin Matczak, and Agnieszka Holland. In recognition of his civic engagement, he was awarded the honorary title of Creator of Social Competencies by the British Council in 2023. He currently mentors younger Minerva University students while continuing to develop new educational and social impact initiatives.