At the Children of Slovakia Foundation, we have been focusing on helping children and young people since 1995.
1. For our partners, we transparently administer their helping grants and programs.
- We have been cooperating with the health insurance company Dôvera on their project called Warriors for health for approximately 10 years. The company provides financial contributions to its clients for various kind of health treatments, procedures or operations abroad, rehabilitations after injuries which are not covered, or only partially covered, by public health insurance.
- Since 2023, we also have been cooperating with the discount retailer chain LIDL on their In good hands from the beginning project. Once a week, LIDL provides financial assistance in the amount of 2 500 euros to parents with young children under the age of four with serious health disabilities from all over Slovakia.
- In 2023, we were part of a consortium of six independent foundations of the national project Assistance to people from Ukraine in their entry and integration into the territory of the Slovak Republic – MNO (EU-CARE). The EU CARE project represented a unique model of cooperation between the state and the non-governmental sector. Our consortium has distributed more than 9.5 million euros to 110 non-governmental organizations helping refugees from Ukraine.
2. Via our own grant program The Children’s Hour, we respond to the needs of children from single-parent families.
The Children’s Hour program has been focusing on helping all children and young people since 1999. In 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we decided to focus our help specifically on children and young people from single-parent families. In 2020, Eurostat statistics showed that Slovak families with one parent fall into poverty the fastest in the European Union. As statistics also showed us, approximately 90 percent of single parents are single mothers with children and they do not receive adequate support from the state.
For now, single parents can apply twice a year for a one-time financial contribution of 400 euros. It is intended to provide basic life needs, for example food, housing, hygiene, health or school supplies, but also to pay for leisure activities for children.
In addition to a one-time contribution, thanks to collecting an enormous amount of information from their applications, we want to provide them with long-term financial, material and professional assistance in future.
How did we help the single parents’ families in 2022?
In 2022, thanks to our partners and private donors, we managed to help 394 single-parent families. One hundred of them received a one-time financial contribution of 400 euros (a total of 40,000 euros). Most of them were in a critical life situation and used the donation to buy winter clothes and food supplies for children, hygiene items and medicine. However, the funds also went to children’s education. Thanks to our partners, the largest commercial bank in Slovakia called Slovenská sporiteľna and the family company called DUMAR from Košice, we sent school supplies to 100 children from 70 single-parent families. They found them packed in a completely new school bags! Another 150 single-parent families received 50-euro food vouchers from Slovenská sporiteľna before Christmas. The Pepco company gave another 28 one-parent families vouchers (worth 30 and 40 euros) to buy clothes in its stores. At last, 16 children from single-parent families found several board games under their Christmas tree. Thanks to our partner DUMAR.
3. Thanks to our own projects, we mainly focus on inclusive education in schools and safe free time for children and young people. Our goal is to change the approach of important adults to the inclusion of children and young people in our society. Whether they face physical, intellectual, emotional, social, language or other barriers, they deserve to start from the same line.
To schools, we offer accredited education in topics supporting an inclusive climate for all.
We teach teachers how to work with inclusive values, how to create an inclusive school culture, we teach them respectful communication and how to work with prejudices and anger. At the same time, we place great emphasis on cooperation in the teaching school teams, knowing the principles of cooperation, either within the school or with external partners – school founders, local organizers of leisure activities and non-governmental organizations, with parents and grandparents.
In 2023, we obtained:
- accreditation for education from the Slovak Ministry of Education,
- provided 400 hours of innovative education,
- organized 51 workshops (online and offline),
- provided 20 hours of updating education,
- cooperated with 8 elementary schools throughout Slovakia.
In addition, from the last school year (2022/2023), we run The Regional Teacher Support Center (RCPU) for the districts of Banská Bystrica and Brezno.
The main activities of our regional center include mentoring for teachers and their further education. For example, we organize open discussions and free workshops for them on current topics like feedback as a communication tool, cooperative conflict resolution, reading literacy etc. Mapping of educational needs in schools in the Banská Bystrica and Brezno also belongs to our portfolio of meaningful and necessary activities.
Last school year, exactly 941 people from the school environment participated in our educational activities. We organized 57 workshops, 4 discussions, 3 lectures and 11 group facilitations. We cooperated with 22 schools in the districts of Banská Bystrica and Brezno and provided them with mentoring for 333 teachers, 530 individual consultations and 165 personal class visits.
