Save the ruins of a Slovak monastery - Katarinka

Although the Church and Monastery of St Catherine are still covered with snow and it seems everything is sleeping, the volunteers from the Katarinka project are actively working and focusing on the preparations for the new season. One of the first working sessions of this year was the weekend meeting of the Katarinka project leadership. Apart from the quality time spent together and interesting teambuilding activities (such as visit of the beautifully restored Chtelnica manor-house), the five project leaders – Peter, Jakub, Katarina, Maria and Peter - discussed the strategic topics and challenges of the next season and also set the main priorities for the upcoming year. As we are celebrating a special anniversary this year – 400years since the foundation of the Franciscan monastery of St Catherine in 1618 - one of our main goals is to open Katarinka for all people from near and far. With the opening of the 30-metres high church tower as a sightseeing tower for the public in the summer last year, the number of visitors has substantially increased. We want all the tourists, who are visiting this exceptional place, feel welcomed when and provide them with the interesting historical information about the Church and Monastery and also raise their awareness of its cultural value.

To make this happen, the first months of the year were dedicated to various workshops and soft skills trainings for new enthusiastic volunteers, who attended the two-week summer camps previous year and expressed their wish to actively help Katarinka in the upcoming season. These young people have been invited to participate in specialized educational workshops, which were structured around presentations which provided insight into the history and development of Katarinka, voluntary service and presented the main ideas and key goals of the project. The lectures also focused on enhancement of communication, leadership and organization skills of the participants and covered topics such as effective teamwork, stress and time management. The workshops allowed all participants to enter into practical discussion with experienced volunteers, who are already involved in the project for longer period of time and therefore gladly shared their knowledge and know-how with the new volunteers. Feedback from the workshops was very positive – participants saw great value in presented practical information, the opportunity for networking and learning from one another. They underlined that the skills they gained in these workshops will be useful for them not only in the Katarinka project itself, but also in their other activities and pursuits.

Although we are not working directly on Katarinka ruins during this „off-season“ time, a small group of our ten project volunteers visited our friends at the Hrušov Castle in order to help them out with the necessary winter maintenance work and snow shoveling on the castle grounds – some of our volunteers were so eager in their help that they even managed to break some of the shovels J.

So in this preparation atmosphere we are slowly, but surely approaching the highly anticipated opening day of season 2018 – April 8, 2018. Like every year, we start the season with a traditional public pilgrimage held on the first Sunday after Easter. The pilgrims walk 15 kilometers from Bukova to Katarinka, where we officially open the season with a special holy mass celebrated in the ruins of the Church of St Catharine.