Country
Slovakia
Place of realisation
The whole country
Description of process/realiazation
“Smile giving” is the name of a pre-Christmas social project annually organized by The National Association of Past Pupils in Slovakia in the cooperation with the Slovak Catholic Charity and the members of Salesian Family in Slovakia.
The main goal of the social project is through this act of love and generosity answering concrete needs of concrete destitute families. The very important part of the projects are so called tipers = people, who are acquainted with the hard situation of recipients of the help contact us with the name of the concrete family or people in the need so the help is the surprise for them, they do not know about anything. Tipers are mostly sisters FMA, VDB and social workers from charity houses within the Slovak Catholic Charity.
We try to encourage our communities to be aware of these families and people in need because there are many of them that need help. The project has three stages:
1. Concrete things = tipers make a list of the concrete things such as fridge, washing machine, microwaves, school facilities, clothes, shoes, cleaning and hygienic stuff, food based on necessary needs of families in financial crises or people under the care of foster homes or charity centers
2. schoeboxes = collecting boxes of shoes filled with some toys, sweets or clothes prepared by families and their children that are afterwards spread into the families in need and put under the Christmas tree to please pure children. As far as we have the name list of these pure children, we put the concrete name of the child on the shoebox to address the gift straight to the child and to make the Christmas more familiar and personal.
3. “Smile for somebody” = the financial collection for the concrete person or an organization that changes every year of the project (e.g. 2016 – to provide medical facilities for sick little girl in the family under the financial crisis, 2017- boy foster home run by Salesians in Ukraine, Lviv…)
At the end of the duration of the project we organize beneficial concert as the thankgiving to all the donors because thanks to their cooperation, time, self-sacrifice and gifts is this social project so successful 5. years so far.
Reciever of project: Families in the financial crisis, foster homes, Christian schools and crisis centers all over the Slovakia
Budget of project: 2 000 eur (propagation, office materials, renting fees, travelling expanses, organization expanses of the project)
Duration of realization: 2 months
Conclusions / strong parts of project: The project is the great opportunity to help concrete people and families in the hard situation that are often in our neighborhood and are not heard by anyone. Also it is the tool to put the Salesian family together and answer the concrete need of the concrete people. We are grateful for everything we got from Salesians so we want to donate from this gratefulness.
Name of resonsabile/contact person: Kristína Jakubcová
Contact: asistent@exallievi.sk
