EYV 2011 Patrons in the CR

Dagmar Hoferková

Chief of VC ADRA in Ostrava
Volunteering and me – never is too late to begin.
It’s been four years that I met volunteering for the first time. It happened in 2007, at the training of volunteers of Volunteer Centre ADRA in Frýdek-Místek. I didn’t presage how much this meeting of a new experience will change my life.

I joined the Consecutive Care Unit in Hospital of Bílovec in February 2007.  I led the Memory Training Bee and also lessons of motoric activities. These activities took place in three departments, always for ten or fifteen seniors. During the year when I volunteered there, I had a chance to get to know many patients. Meeting each of them was a unique experience for me. They always let me feel their great joy of my presence and their gratefulness. In these meetings, we experienced an exceptional feeling of belonging and mutual understanding. Despite of the ambience and circumstances where we met, these moments were mostly very nice, optimistic and many times even amusing.
Moments spent with these people filled me with a great feeling of meaningfulness and satisfaction of a high-quality time spending. No wonder, when I got the offer to establish a volunteer center ADRA in Ostrava, I didn’t hesitate a lot and I accepted it. I left my former employment in technical-commercial sphere, that was very distant to social and health sphere, and I began to addict myself to volunteering for the full time. During the time and with growing experience, I ascertained it was a step in good direction and that this way is the right one for me at this moment. When I see that activities of our volunteers help to hundreds of people who need it in Ostrava and broad surroundings, I am proud that I can play a part in this great work.  

Robin Ujfaluši

Director of INEX – Union of Volunteer Activities
Robin comes from Rýmařov. When remembering his childhood, he is grateful to many of football trainers - up to the present day. They lead him in the local team with a great enthusiasm and with no demand for salary, as volunteers. He itself volunteered in 2002, when Prague and other cities suffered floods. Systematically, he met the topic in 2005, when he left for three months to Nairobi (Kenya) to work as volunteer in slums. For him it was such a unique and inspiring experience, that he continued in INEX-SDA in development issues and international volunteering. For a short time, he worked as volunteer at social-sport festival in Germany (2006) and at a country school in Turkey (2007). In years 2006-2009, he co-established and led developing and educational campaign “Football for development” that works in European extent now. In that time, he was active as a member of coordinating group of the “Czech lands against poverty Campaign”. In 2009, he left for a year-long internship with United Nations Volunteers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he addressed himself to civic society development, volunteering promotion and lobbying for the Volunteering Act. Beginning of 2010, he returned to Union of Volunteer Activities INEX, the biggest Czech NGO in the sphere of international volunteering (and following intercultural and development education), where he works as director in present days. He tries to develop capacities in this sphere to allow to more and more people in the CR to pass such unique volunteering opportunities as he had.

 „The mission of INEX-SDA is to support development of a tolerant, open society and active, responsible approach to the world around in local and global level through international volunteering projects, educational programs and campaigns. Through our activity, we create a space where namely (but not only) young people can acquire new experience, develop their abilities and finish their own view of the world“.