Depaul Slovakia: Breakfast for the Homeless

Depaul Slovakia Actions

Period January 2016 – April 2016

To begin with, let us thank you for all your support and help to our organization. 
Thanks to your help the homeless people have a chance to make a change in their life. 

After a very busy end of year, which on the other hand was full of nice activities, we started 2016 with new campaigns.

In January we tried to give feedback to all companies and donors who participated to Christmas celebration for the homeless people at Depaul.

Based on the knowledge that social media are a very powerful tool to spread the information, we have created the “Album of Help” gathering stories of homeless people to help them find donors for their individual needs. Reactions to this campaign were over our expectations.

• The very first story was about Štefan, who had had a debt on social insurance and because of that could not apply for the invalidity pension. Within a few days we raised enough money to pay off the debt and now Štefan is already receiving his pension.
• Another story was about Peter, who unfortunatelay died in the nightshelter. For his family who lives 400 km far from Bratislava the major problem in this sad situation was to transport his body home to bury him. We have raised a request at the “Album of Help” and we were very surprised by the emotions coming from Peter´s death.  After a few weeks we collected enough money to prepare everything that was needed to bury him. Even his family contributed with the amount that was possible for them. We do really appreciate empathy of all donors, on behalf of Peter´s family as well.

That is why in March we had very sad moments in our organization where two of our clients died: Peter (as mentioned before) and Ján. We prepared a nice farewell for them: next to the building of the night shelter there is a small garden with a big cross made by our clients. We invited a priest to celebrate mass in memory of both our clients who passed away. Homeless people who knew them joined Depaul staff as well. One woman moved by a nice atmosphere there left a written message for Depaul team. In the letter she expressed her “… thanks to workers and managers of the nightshelter who are helping … and who are able to make impossible things real”.  And also who: “ … are not (like) politicians, but people with Big Hearths.” Feedbacks like this from people we serve are the best motivation to do our job better. 

Now to continue on a nicer tone, our clients from the Shelter of St. Louise de Marillac try to take advantage of the nicer weather coming from the beginning of spring to go out. Each Thursday they are cleaning a park close to our shelter. Before Easter they also participated in the preparations of the Easter decoration. Gardening is a very useful activity for therapy. Homeless people from our shelter spent a lot of time in the backyard preparing space to plant vegetables. During their free time, social workers organized the chess competition and winners got nice presents. Recently they visited a National Gallery and had the sightseeing tour within the old part of the town. The clients of the shelter are very happy with such kind of the activities.