Who we are

This is our story

It all started when we cooked a good goulash in the biggest pot we had at home in a block of flats, which we then delivered to homeless people in Brno (year 2013).

Over time, thanks to this food aid, we gained the trust of these people and were able to establish beautiful friendships. People could see that we genuinely cared about them and wanted to help them get off the streets.

We often think that people who are homeless are to blame for their own irresponsible lifestyles. However, in our ministry we have encountered the fate of people who have become homeless through no fault of their own.

For example:

Mrs. Drahomíra is an elderly woman who during her lifetime signed her apartment over to her son, who took advantage of this and had this nice woman evicted without mercy. He did it because he wanted to sell the apartment. Because of this, Mrs Drahomira found herself on the street from one day to the next. She heard about our ministry and approached us, told us her story and we were able to provide her with temporary accommodation in rented premises. We literally saved her life from the streets.

Mr. Karel is an elderly man who was thrown out on the street by his own wife who found another man. For several years this elderly man had been living literally on the streets and if there was an opportunity to sleep in warmth and under a roof, he took it. Mr. Karel met us when we were giving out lunches regularly in the park on Čechyňská Street for homeless people. Thanks to the rented premises, we were able to offer him housing and help him get off the streets. Mr. Karel was a very nice person even though he had been living on the streets for several years. Today it is two years since he left us forever.

A boy named Lukáš, originally from the Slovak Republic, had experienced domestic violence since childhood and had to watch his father beat his mother under the influence of alcohol. When he turned 15, he decided to run away from home. From the age of 15, he had to live wherever he could and became homeless. We met this young man when we visited the squatted house where he lived.

Unfortunately, the category of homeless includes not only individuals but also entire families with small children who find themselves in difficult situations.

For example:

The Vlček family, who rented the apartment. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the father, the breadwinner of the family, lost his job and because of this they started having problems with lack of finances. There was no money to pay the rent. The landlord of the apartment had the nice family evicted and they had nowhere to go with their children. So the nice family had to sleep over wherever they could, even with their one-year-old girl.

The family got the phone number of our Aid society from the Charity and then asked us for help.

The H. family found themselves on the street due to lack of finances. All they had left was their old car, in which the whole family of five slept in the parking lot of the TESCO market. The children were 15, 13 and 6 years old. When we found out that they were sleeping in the car, we looked for a way to help them. To start with, we offered them a sleepover in our former office, where we set up a bedroom with a bed. After that, this family was able to find a new home and a new job.

The D. family lost their housing and had to sleep on park benches with their young children for several months. The children were 3 and 6 years old. This family sought help on the internet. They found the Aid Society website so they could call us and tell us their life story. This family was located near Prague, so after the phone call we went to them and brought them to us in Brno. We offered them temporary accommodation in rented premises, which gave them enough time to get a new job and then a new place to live.

Service to children

Since 2016, the service to children at risk of poverty has also grown. We help the families of these children with food aid, but we also provide the possibility of tutoring the children. We help tutor subjects in which children do not have very good results. Thanks to this, in 2018 we received 20 report cards from these children, who boasted to us that their results really improved rapidly. Every year we also organize summer children's camps for these children, which are completely free and thanks to our supporters.

We currently care for approximately 27 children who are staying with their mothers or families. We cooperate with the association of social services, which has managed to contact the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University, from which students come to us to give individual attention to the children and help improve their school results. Since children are more receptive and responsive to positive changes in their studies, this service is very dynamic and changes and results are faster.

Single mothers

Every day we are contacted by single mothers asking for food assistance. This group is not only at risk of poverty, but also difficult emotional and psychological situations. Some mothers are in such a bad situation that they even need help with providing diapers and hygiene. Our Aid Society also works with children from these mothers. We guide them to have a positive attitude towards education, nature and to help their moms. Thanks to the cooperation with Merhautova Primary School, we also have teachers who always take a few children, ask them what school subjects they are not doing well in and what they need to explain - this is how they tutor them here.

Why do we do this?

When we saw how many homeless people die on the streets in the winter, when we saw that children in the Czech Republic were living in poor living conditions, when we saw the number of mothers who were abused by their husbands or boyfriends and who turned to us for help, we could not just sit back and do nothing. We started with ourselves, so we try to help as much as we can for these people who really need that help.

Now we also need help to build a new House of Help, so if you are not indifferent to the fate of the people with whom our Christian Aid Society works, help us build this new House of Help.

Support our ten years of work, which is worth a lifetime. Be a part of changing lives.