Stand by the Child

The Caring Wings Foundation is launching the “Stand by the Child” campaign. Each week, we will present a series of true stories of the children in our charge who receive daily support at the Foundation.

I’m Jurek and I’m 11 years old

I live with my mother and my siblings: Anna (4 years old), Christopher (7 years old) and Asia (9 years old). We all come to the Foundation. Mom increasingly says she’s tired and yells at us terribly. Recently Krzysiek locked Asia in the bathroom and wouldn’t let her out for two hours. It was funny, but Mom was very angry and beat him up a lot afterwards. Krzysiek often beats mom and the girls, and takes my things away from me. It makes me terribly angry, I am then really angry. Sometimes a lady from Social Services comes and checks if the house is clean and if we have something to eat. When she is supposed to come, my mother is very upset and makes us clean up. I would rather live with my dad. Then I would have peace of mind. But mom says I can’t see him, because when he got out of jail it’s not clear where he lives.

The Foundation is the people. The Foundation is Us and You.

We want to tell you not only about our successes and how we operate and have a nice day with children in need. We want to tell you what difficulties we face every day in our pedagogical work. What problems children and young people come to us with. We will tell you why your regular support is so much needed. Each child or adolescent in our charge is struggling with a huge burden. We get to know their stories gradually. Trust is the basis of the conversation and relationship between an adult from the Foundation’s team and the child in our charge. Every day we hear the hard stories of the children and their families, we learn about their daily life, we know what they are facing.

Alcohol, dire housing conditions, loneliness

These are the most common problems faced by wards of children practically from birth. Their parents often struggle with alcohol and/or drug addiction. Nightly parties of parents and their concubines cause children to be sleep-deprived, witness libations, violent situations and aggression. They don’t have the conditions to take care of their studies and are too tired to get up for school in the morning. Sometimes they are humiliated and insulted by their own parents and their friends. All this causes them to grow frustrated and lonely.

I don’t want to be at home

Lack of acceptance in their own homes causes children and adolescents to spend more and more time in a group of peers in the backyard , “behind the school.” They are increasingly returning to an unloved home where they have no privacy (many of our children have a bed in the kitchen because of cramped living quarters). Evening walks or even loitering with friends in Prague’s backyards, end up with drinking alcohol, fights and even a case in court.

A home where one does not want to spend time is a home that destroys self-esteem and arouses aggression and sadness in the child. The children and adolescents in our charge, are often neglected by their parents nutritionally, emotionally, educationally. It happens that they come to us dirty, hungry, in clothes that are too small, with lice and smell really bad. Their emotions and needs are pushed and trampled on by the closest adults. Therefore, building trust with adults is a tremendously difficult and long process.

Home of Caring Wings

It’s cool that you’re here! It’s a phrase that can be heard about a hundred times here.

The Foundation House is a place full of acceptance, love and tolerance. The house is clean, the refrigerator is always full, everyone can find a space for themselves here. The team is healthy adults, educators and specialists who talk and rebuild trust among children every day. They support them , equalizing their emotional, educational, social opportunities. This is a huge contrast to their immediate daily environment. Here we talk about children’s problems and find new solutions together with them. Here the wards learn to set boundaries and say “stop” when someone crosses them. We show them new forms of spending time, new choices of life path. We talk about education, being a child, being a teenager. Because everyone has the right to be themselves and develop properly.

It is up to us adults to further the lives of socially excluded children and young people. The House of Caring Wings exists thanks to the regular commitment of donors and can only exist because of them. Together, let’s take care of a place where children feel safe and have a chance for privacy and friendship and development.

Therefore, please STAND ON THE SIDE OF THE CHILD and embrace one child with your Caring Wings so that, thanks to you, he or she can develop in a safe environment.

What can you do? Here are some ideas.

Become a holiday patron. Provide a vacation for one child. The cost of the trip for one child is 900 PLN. We are looking for patrons and patronesses for individual children: Ola, Julia, Gabi, Meli, Klaudia, Kasia, Wiktoria, Amelia, Zuzia, Michal, Janek. Click: https://tiny.pl/rbjzq
WIELKITALERZ.PL provide one child with a food package. It costs PLN 96 per month. The program covers children between the ages of 7 and 19. Click: http://wielkitalerz.pl
CARING WINGS PROGRAM. This is a program in which the caregiver, through the activities of the foundation, provides a specific child with daily educational care, support in education, the development of his personal passions, a good start in later life! Click here: https://tiny.pl/744w5