World of Good People – Community Center – European LEADER Congress 2024

Czech Republic

Introduction

Due to the project a new place for community gathering and organizing local support for socially excluded inhabitants was established in the town of Dobříš – the biggest town of our LAG (9000 people). We put together people who offer help with those who need it. In the community center we organize collection and distribution of food and other necessities (hygiene items, basic household equipment) for homeless people, families in threat of social exclusion, elderly people who live alone etc. We also provide so called community wardrobe where the community can bring clothes in good condition and those who need it can choose what fits them. For children we organize tutoring, leisure time activities (ceramic classes, sport and gaming activities) and also special kind of therapies (for children in poor psychological condition), such as canistherapy, therapy with horses. We also support peer activities where older children and youngsters work with younger (common baking and tutoring). A great help was organized in our community center for Ukrainian refugees – purchase and distribution of winterization items (pillows, duvets, kitchen equipment, mattresses), food, diapers, washing detergents among more than 200 refugees. We laso support intercultural activities such as comon cooking with Ukrainian comunity.

Presentation of the project

The project – new and the only one community center in our region was situated to the town of Dobříš, which is a natural center of the Brdy-Vltava region consisting of 32 municipalities which are managed by our LAG. There was no such a place in the whole region before. Through our work we met a lot of people from our community who would like to do something for others, but there was no space for such activities. On the other hand, there were around 400 people living in our region who were threat of social exclusion. For example, homeless people did not have any place where they can wash themselves and do the laundry. All of these led us into thinking of creating a place where could offered help meet with those in need. This is also the main objective of the project. Immediate capacity of the center is 50 people. During the project from July 2020 till June 2023 in total 538 local inhabitants repeatedly used the services of the center. We organized for example 36 meetings of seniors, 120 creative art activities for handicapped people, 35 meetings and creative activities for Ukrainian refugees, 150 lessons of the Czech language, 25 creative afternoons for children, 25 English lessons for children, 21 psychological activities,19 sewing lessons, 7 common cooking days. Distribution of food and other equipment every week, laundry and shower for homeless people every week and lots of other activities with the local community. The possibility of having a key project in our strategy financed through CLLD was crucial to make our vision happen. We have a great community around our LAG and due to the project, we have now also a place where we can meet and organize what is needed at the moment. This place allows us to flexibly react on various situations concerning our community. The project is going on also in the new program period 2021+.

Emblematic character of the project

Location: Austria/ Salzburg Pongau

There has not be established any community center in our region which should collect and react on needs of community as a whole. That was the main reason why was this project chosen as a priority for realization by actors in region. Creation of community center is the reaction on main goal of LAG SCLLD – GOOD CARE SERVICES (social area) and on identified local need – Development of field social work including community social work. Concept of Community center with its broad focus on whole community was chosen as best tool for implementation of LEADER principles in LAG region. We are now closer to inhabitants. We can better work with them and we provide better and more targeted support for them.

We live in very variable surrounding regarding to needs of people. The added value of our community center consists on its flexibility. It is also main challenge of LAG strategy – to be flexible in reaction on situations which are coming to us (mentioned as well in paragraph above in identified need in our LAG Strategy). We are trying out it and we hope we are successful in providing targeted help for people with their specific needs.

We are ready to help other LAGs in realizing similar project and to provide them our experience. We do not see any problem with transfer of our community center concept to other LAG or other rural actors. The main precondition is only to have desire to help people in given community and to have community social worker/s who are educated how to work with community and of course to have suitable open space where community can meet.

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