Smart Kolektiv Inspires Hope at Local Down Syndrome Center

Katarina runs an art workshop called Pohvala Ruci (“Praise to Hand”) in the Senjak neighborhood of Belgrade.  The workshop serves as a day center for 15 “kids” (now adults, but Katarina still refers to them as such) with Down syndrome, who have all been attending since Katarina opened the workshop ten years ago.  She has two grown children of her own, but everyone in Pohvala Ruci is like one big family to her.

You would need to feel a strong connection to the people you work with, because it isn't easy work running such a workshop.  When Katarina started, the facility was a run-down shed on the grounds of a Sports Gymnasium, used to store trash.  She fixed it up and turned it into a workshop, thanks in part to support from the wife of assassinated Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić.  But she has found it difficult to keep the center open due to pressure from the school, which has been unsupportive before of what the workshop does to its image, in this prosperous neighborhood.  And Serbia, once part of prosperous Yugoslavia, the “little America” of Eastern Europe, is now a poor country with minimal support or resources for philanthropy.  The workshop raises funds by auctioning the kids' artwork at an annual exhibition at the Center for Culture in Belgrade, as well as greeting cards and calendars.  Money is tight, but Katarina doesn't mind.  She's an artist, she says, and what's important is in the heart.

Pohvala Ruci got some help from the community a couple weeks ago, when the NGO Smart Kolektiv, an implementing partner of the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), organized a citywide volunteer day, “Nas Beograd” (“Our Belgrade”).  “Our Belgrade,” a part of Smart's Business Leaders Forum (BLF), Serbia's first and only network of companies to promote corporate social responsibility, saw simultaneous actions across the city on June 6, ranging from helping a chess club for blind children, to a trip to the zoo for street-involved children, to cleaning up trash on Great War Island in the Danube River.  Katarina says she received a letter from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, asking her if the workshop needed any repairs.  She responded it did, expecting no follow up, but about two weeks later she was surprised by a call from Smart.  And despite her continued skepticism, based on long experience, Smart Kolektiv showed up on Saturday the 6th with 10 volunteers from the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, a BLF member.

Based on Katarina's requests, the volunteers repaired the fence around the workshop's yard, which had before allowed in stray dogs and cats, as well as trash discarded by passers by.  They installed metal windowsills to prevent rain and snow from entering inside or damaging the structure.  And they renovated and repainted the outer wall of the workshop, which had been crumbling over time from water damage, because the building lacks a foundation.  The volunteers also had a chance to meet and paint with the kids.  It was a “really, really nice time,” she said, with everyone working together, laughing, playing.

Afterward, the volunteers offered to help out however they could in the future.  Katarina and Smart Kolektiv both hope that similar volunteer actions will be promoted in the future.  But many difficulties remain for the workshop.  Next up, Katarina said, is repair of the decades-old roof, which will soon begin to let in the sky.  And finances are never easy: this year for the first time, they could not afford to take the kids on a vacation at the end of the academic year.  Nevertheless, Katarina's perseverance in her work, and Smart Kolektiv's advances in bringing businesses and their communities together, inspire lasting hope.