Service Offering

MISSION STATEMENT AND PRINCIPLES 

HELPING PEOPLE

COME HELP WITH US

 

Our Work Czech language Czech version

Following our spontaneous beginnings in voluntary charity work, we had to make a choice: continue to help needy people as a charity or pursue a professional career? The choice was clear and soon our first work plan was formulated, with clearly stated goals and steps.

All of the social programs are conceived as mutually complementary and are revised and updated as needed to meet society’s changing needs and our ability and capacity to meet them. The services provided within each program are adapted to the specific needs of target groups and may vary from place to place, branch to branch. During the past few years it has become clear that some elements of the programs overlap in specific projects.

This broad, open-ended system of services operates within the framework of preventing poverty, loneliness and social isolation, while at the same time conducting social interventions in cases where poverty, loneliness and social isolation have already occurred, including their most extreme form - homelessness. Since Naděje first began helping refugees, we have been multi-ethnic: in terms of clients as well as in hiring employees and choosing volunteer workers.

Our approach to each client is individual; our help is always tailored to its recipient. In each person we endeavor to see a human being - God’s creation - always possessing human dignity and deserving adequate treatment, regardless of his or her current condition. When the client’s immediate needs are met (meal, personal hygiene, clothing, medical help), the priorities are housing – or at least temporary accommodations - and employment for those who are able to work.

In the past, we formulated two activities as separate programs: the Food Aid Program (commenced in 1990) and the Health Assistance Program (from 1992). These programs are an integral part of all our social services.

Food aid has been a part of all of Naděje’s activities, right from the very beginning. It is based on the assumption that the first thing a needy person needs is to satisfy his or her basic biological need for food. When we began operating in 1990, food was distributed to refugees - first at the Holešovice Train Station in Prague, then in the former Hotel Flora, and later in refugee camps. In the early years, food aid was also organized to foreign countries: Bosnia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Romania. In 1997, during the floods in Moravia, we were also involved in providing food aid to flooded areas. In principle, food aid involves sourcing, warehousing, and distributing foodstuffs. Naděje initiated the establishment and development of a network of food banks in the Czech Republic. Food banks store donated, quality foodstuffs that are then distributed to needy people through other organizations based on the principle „what you received for free, give for free“.

Health care is an appropriate complement to our social programs, especially in our residential facilities. Home care and a doctor’s office are important elements. By its very essence, health care is a natural part of the social services we provide for clients with health-related handicaps and senior citizens. We have registered nurses in all branches that provide services to these client groups, and we cooperate with physicians - both general practitioners and specialists. In Brno, an internal medicine and geriatric clinic has been operating since 1994.

Our general practitioner‘s office for homeless people is the only one of its kind in Prague. Due to their way of life, homeless people are often in very poor health. Mostly they suffer from skin diseases and upper respiratory tract conditions, but cases of dangerous infectious diseases occur from time to time as well. Due to their unkempt appearance and insufficient personal hygiene, these clients often have difficulty obtaining treatment in conventional healthcare facilities.