NATIONAL 20 ANNUAL 17 REPORT - sos-dsh.hrsos-dsh.hr/include/pdf/HR-Annual_Report-2017.pdf · NATIONAL ANNUAL REPORT 2017 SECTION ONE ANNUAL REPORT 5 1.1 SUMMARY OF SOS CHILDREN’S

NATIONAL ANNUAL REPORT

20 17

SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE CROATIA


2017Written & prepared by:Visnja Tuskan-Krupic

National Director

January 2018

3TABLE OF CONTENS

SECTION ONE: ANNUAL REPORT1.1 Summary of SOS Children’s Village Work in Croatia in 2017

1.2 Time Schedule of Major Events for 2018

SECTION TWO: BOARD MEMBERS LIST2.1. Board Members of the Association

SECTION THREE: FACILITY REPORTS3.1 SOS Children’s Village Lekenik

3.2 SOS YF Zagreb & Velika Gorica

3.3 SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci

3.4 SOS Youth Facility Osijek & Osijek I

3.5 Success Stories

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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SECTION ONE ANNUAL REPORT 4

SECTION ONE

ANNUAL REPORT

NATIONAL ANNUAL REPORT 2017


1.1 SUMMARY OF SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE CROATIA WORK IN 2017

The economic situation in the country remains unfavourable. The poverty index went up by 3.4% in 2017 and now stands at 23.4%. As for population in Croatia capable of labour, 80.2% are employed and al-though the unemployment rate went down by 2.6% in comparison to 2016, it now stands at 12.2%. Of 193.967 persons who were unemployed in December 2017, 27.8% were people younger than 25. The decreased unemployment rate can be partly attributed to a large number of population capable of labour leaving the country and moving to other EU countries to find employment there. Unofficial figures show that more than 200.000 citizens have left Croatia since 2013, when we became a member of the EU.

The table below provides an overview of the most important economic trends in 2017 when compared to 2016:

Economic trends* 2016 2017GDP +2.8% +3.0%Exports +4.3% +3.7%Imports +4.2% +4.7%Energy and transportation prices +2.6% +4.4%Industrial products prices +3.1% +7.0%Food expenditures +0.4% +0.9%Total inflation +0.2% +1.3%Unemployment rate 14.8% 12.2%Total number of the unemployed persons in December 241.860 193.967Average monthly paid off gross earnings +1.9% +2.8%Average monthly paid off net earnings +2.0% +4.3%Poverty index 20% 23.4%

*Source: Računovodstvo, revizija i financije (Bookkeeping, Audit and Finances), Issue 2, 2018

Despite everything, SOS Children’s Village Croatia managed to provide normal life for our children and youth and fulfil all our obligations towards our co-workers.

Expenses in 2017 increased by 3.16% in comparison to 2016, due to the optimization of F2F activities expenses in the FR/PR Department and due to the expanded FSP activities on the Lekenik location.

Budget expenditures in 2017 were 96.43%, investments were 98.73. The investment into the renovation of roofs, bathroom fixtures and carpentry in SOS Children’s Village Lekenik was realized in the amount of 120% due to the self-financing share.

Local FR income was 94.21% of the plan, due to a slightly slower rise of volume of F2F activities and fine tuning the F2F in-house work organization, so the real growth is expected in 2018.

Given all these excellent results, we are confident that we will be able to fulfil our Sustainable Path Strat-egy and achieve self-financing status in 2019. Applying for public grants also contributes to this goal. In 2017 all our project proposals were accepted, primarily proposals for our mobile team projects on loca-tions SOS Children’s Village Lekenik and Ladimirevci.



The Board of Directors held four sessions in the course of 2017, in keeping with the established agenda that covered funding, pedagogical activities, SOS mothers, child protection etc. In June we held the 26th Elective Assembly of SOS Children’s Village Croatia, where the Assembly members re-elected the cur-rent President and Board members for another 3-year term, i.e., until 2020.

NMT (National Management Team), which has seven members, held four regular sessions to discuss current events and activities on locations, including the work of the Villages, i.e. the Family Based Care, and mobile teams, i.e. the Family Strengthening Programme. They carefully monitored and analysed the financial operations, income and expenditures of the Association. Thanks to the professional and selfless work of everyone involved, in 2017 we made sure that our children and youth had everything they need-ed to live and develop as they should, while fulfilling all our obligations to our co-workers and external collaborators at the same time.

Year 2017 was also a year of celebrations, which were more frequent than usual. First we marked the 20th anniversary of SOS Children’s Villages Ladimirevci on May 25, 2017, with a joyous celebration centred around children. In the past 20 years, SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci has provided a caring home for 224 children, thanks to the dedicated work of all SOS mothers, aunties, care professionals ranging from psychologists and pedagogues to social workers, administrative staff, caretaker, Village handymen and, of course, the director of SOS Children’s Villages Ladimirevci himself, Mr. Zoran Relić.



The highlight of 2017 was the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Association SOS Children’s Vil-lage Croatia, which we marked throughout the year, first with the Be Proud of Yourself Campaign and then with the central event that took place in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb on October 5, 2017. We were deeply honoured with the presence of Mr. Siddhartha Kaul, President of SOS Children’s Villages International, Mr. Norbert Meder, CEO of SOS CVI, Mr. Wilfried Vyslozil, President of the Her-mann-Gmeiner-Fonds-Deutschland Board of Directors and Mr. Kay Vorwerk, President of the SOS-Kin-derdorf e.V. Deutschland Board of Directors. The celebration was also attended by the representative of the Croatian Prime Minister and the representatives of the Ministry of Demographics, Family, Youth and Social Policy and the City of Zagreb. We were thankful for their contribution to this major event.



At the event itself, SOS mothers with 10 years of service were awarded with rings of honour. They re-ceived their rings from President Kaul – recipients were 5 SOS mothers from the region, 2 SOS mothers from SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci and 1 SOS mother from SOS Children’s Village Lekenik. We also screened films Be Proud of Yourself and Our 25 Years. You can watch both films and the recording of the celebration in MCA Zagreb by clicking on following links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpgRjQuEFuE&index=5&list=UU_UStprwPQ6MkqD6yCTEH6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxGovRH1fx0&index=2&list=UU_UStprwPQ6MkqD6yCTEH6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbQd859CHZc&index=7&list=UU_UStprwPQ6MkqD6yCTEH6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpgRjQuEFuE&index=5&list=UU_UStprwPQ6MkqD6yCTEH6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxGovRH1fx0&index=2&list=UU_UStprwPQ6MkqD6yCTEH6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbQd859CHZc&index=7&list=UU_UStprwPQ6MkqD6yCTEH6Q



In conclusion, not only was it wonderful to celebrate our 25th anniversary, it was equally wonderful to ex-perience all the work done by SOS Children’s Village Croatia in these past 25 years. I am happy that I contributed to all these years personally, just like all my colleagues who joined us over the years. With-out all of us together, we wouldn’t have been able to provide caring childhood for app. 500 children who lived in our SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik and Ladimirevci and their SOS Youth Facilities over the past 25 years. We are also thankful for the cooperation and support of our Association President Ms. Mariza Katavić and all the members of our Board of Directors.

We concluded the celebration with a promise to meet again in 5 years, in 2022, to celebrate the 30th an-niversary of SOS Children’s Villages Croatia. All the co-workers of the Association SOS Children’s Vil-lage Croatia, including SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik and Ladimirevci, will persist in fulfilling our vision:

“Our vision remains the same: we will continue to provide high-quality social services

for children, youth and all families within the social welfare network in the Republic of Croatia”.



Višnja Tuškan-KrupićNational Director



ONE CHILD

2017 was a year rich with activities and events. The work of the programme department covered sever-al important segments: monitoring the developments in the social welfare system and resolving the sta-tus of both our SOS Children’s Villages; following and applying to public calls for project proposals and developing new projects and programmes; realizing the objectives of our Sustainable Path strategy and monitoring the work quality in all our programmes.

As in previous years, developments in the social welfare system were affected by the staffing and organ-izational changes at the competent Ministry of Demographics, Family, Youth and Social Policy. Unfortu-nately, the administrative-organizational changes did not lead to any fundamental changes and improve-ments to the social welfare system. The process of deinstitutionalization and transformation of children’s homes, which is very important to us, continues at a very slow pace and it is still focused solely on state-owned homes. A new operational plan for the DI process in the period extending beyond 2016 has not been drawn up yet and the process of amending the Regulation on Minimum Standards for the Provision of Social Services, which is essential to our work, has been initiated, but it hasn’t been completed yet. The same is true of the Foster Care Act. Expanding the social services network to reflect the social welfare plans and contracting the service providers in the local communities is still ongoing and the process itself lacks transparency. Our activities have been unfolding against the backdrop of staffing changes within the Ministry, poorly defined legislation relevant to our work, lack of clarity in regulations and their uneven practical application. We are happy to say that despite all these difficulties, our SOS Children’s Villages in Lekenik and Ladimirevci continue to provide comprehensive, high-quality care for children without ade-quate parental care with the same intensity, while our youth programs make sure that young persons can acquire adequate education and psychological and social skills required for independent life.

We regularly monitor changes in legislation and take part in public consultations. We actively participat-ed in the public consultation on the amendments to the Regulation on Minimum Standards for the Provi-sion of Social Services and the Ministry of Demographics, Family, Youth and Social Policy appointed our Programme Director as one of the members of the task force assigned to draft the new Foster Care Act.

For the purpose of licencing, as well as the expansion of the range of social services we provide in our SOS Children’s Villages, we requested to be issued the official decision that we meet the legal require-ments and the approval to obtain licence for new services to be provided on both programme locations – Lekenik and Ladimirevci. The services in question are half-day and daily placement, organized living and provision of psychosocial support. By the end of the year, this lengthy process was only completed for SOS CV Ladimirevci and we are still waiting to receive the decision for the other location. Unfortunately, our initiative to launch the service of daily placement in elementary schools in the Županja region did not receive funding from the competent Ministry, resulting in the termination of mobile team activities in the Županjska Posavina region.

Work with our children and youngsters took the form of professionally guided and planned activities in SOS Children’s Villages and youth programmes and it went on smoothly, always with the goal of main-taining high quality of services for children, young people and families, with focus on their best interests, safe development and fulfilment of their potential.



Throughout the year we continued to maintain good relations with the representatives of local communi-ties in which our FSPs operate. We met with the prefect of the Sisak-Moslavina County and the mayor of Glina, where we make use of premises provided to us by the local kindergarten. We use these premises for our mobile team and speech therapist. The premises were furnished and made operational at the be-ginning of the year. The service beneficiaries showed a great deal of interest in the continuation and ex-pansion of our services and activities.

As in previous years, we planned, monitored and implemented our expert work and other relevant activi-ties in both our programme locations in compliance with the guidelines for the implementation of the SOS Children’s Villages Programme Policy. The annual location plans were drafted on the basis of evaluat-ed results. We are proud of the active participation, motivation and engagement of our co-workers in the completed implementation process.

The quality and expertise of activities in all our programmes are monitored regularly through monthly re-ports, which also serve as the basis for annual statistical and narrative reports on the work of FBC and FSP that are submitted to competent bodies. We also carried out an external evaluation of the Mobile Team and Counselling Centre in Sisak-Moslavina County. The results of their work so far have been ex-ceptional and the service beneficiaries are very satisfied with the services we offer.

Personal contacts, meetings and written reports were all used to monitor the pedagogical work in the lo-cations and activities of all FS programmes in Sisak-Moslavina County, Osijek-Baranja County and Vu-kovar-Srijem County. We elevated our quality management to an even higher level by developing the annual plan of audits and internal control processes. In the course of 2017, we carried out the internal control process in SOS CV Lekenik and we also completed a System Based Audit in YF Velika Gorica.

Our programme director held presentations on our experience of applying internal control process and work quality monitoring in SOS Children’s Villages Croatia for the colleagues from other MAs at the an-nual meeting of the programme directors in our region.

After the completed training in the implementation of System Based Audit, a method for monitoring the application of children’s rights in the child care institutions, attended not only by the professionals from our organization, but also by our dear colleagues from the social welfare system, the competent Minis-try and Office of the Ombudswoman for Children, we completed this learning process that ran for almost two years at the final AudTrain conference in Vilnius, where our children’s rights advocate and advisor to the Ombudswoman for Children both gave presentations. Seven of our expert co-workers from all programmes and the NO use the knowledge they acquired in their work to monitor how the children’s rights are practiced and applied in our programmes and projects. Three of them also earned qualifica-tions as trainers.

Through regular capacity utilization in our programmes we monitor our capacity to admit children and we are happy to say that we are currently near the upper limit of full capacity. We receive numerous requests to place biological siblings together, testifying to the fact that the social welfare system recognizes us as family-based alternative care, suitable to provide care and joint placement for a large number of siblings.

The psychosocial and pedagogical work of our expert co-workers is based on regular individual devel-opment plans for each child and young person in our care, which enable us to monitor the process of their development and growth and to respond to their needs with respect to their wishes and abilities. Additionally, we implement the monitoring method of case management in our family strengthening programmes.



For a better part of the year, our work has been affected by the excitement of pre-paring to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Association SOS Children’s Villages Croatia. Throughout all the activities surrounding the anniversary, and especial-ly at the central celebration, we were filled with pride over the accomplishments and success of our children and young people and equally proud of our togeth-erness, the bond between the co-workers and commitment to the SOS idea.

Other significant events in the past year include welcoming a new co-worker to the NO programme department, who is in charge of implementing the interna-tional advocacy project ‘Prepare for Leaving Care’. Additionally, we have be-gun the process of revising all relevant documents on youth care, we took part in mid-term strategic planning and contributed to the review of the SOS Care Guarantee, a new strategic document developed by our umbrella organization. We also developed a new communication and organizational matrix of the pro-gramme department.

Throughout the year, the programme department cooperated with other NO de-partments in a successful and constructive manner. We organized workshops on stress prevention and relaxation techniques for the NO co-workers and we held a workshop on team work and communication for team leaders. In coop-eration with the FR department, we prepared and carried out a workshop for SOS street representatives.

In July we held a first joint meeting of all FSP teams on Sljeme, for the purpose of sharing experiences and information and planning future activities.

Our participation in professional conferences is now a tradition. At the 8th So-cial Workers’ Conference in Šibenik we took part with the following workshops: Securing Children’s Rights and Prepare for Leaving Care, and we gave a



presentation of our FS programme ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’. Our presentation and workshops re-ceived a warm welcome and our work was highlighted as essential because it responds to the needs of the local community for new and innovative social services that we provide in a high-quality, professional manner. Additionally, we presented the work of the Mobile Team and Counselling Centre in the Sisak-Mo-slavina County at the annual meeting of all programme directors in the region.

Protection of children’s rights is an extremely important segment of our work and as such, it is regular-ly monitored, as is the procedure of reporting and responding to children’s rights violations. The national child protection team held its annual meeting and the annual report has been developed for the Associ-ation Board of Directors.

We met with the advisor to the Ombudswoman for Children in SOS CV Lekenik to consider and find op-tions for the resolution of situations that demand attention at present.

Protecting children and their rights is our mission, so in 2017 we worked actively on providing additional training to the co-workers in our Association and both SOS Children’s Villages, focusing on safeguard-ing children and youth in our programmes. In the course of the year we held a total of 5 training courses for 60 participants, namely for our colleagues from the SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik, YF Velika Gor-ica and Zagreb and our colleagues from ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’ Mobile Team and Counsel-ling Centre. We believe that the efficient system of safeguarding the children in our programmes requires a same level of knowledge from all stakeholders. For that reason, these courses include not only our co-workers but also our external collaborators, who run extracurricular activities for our children or pro-vide speech therapy for them.

Results of evaluating the workshops on safeguarding of children show that our co-workers and external collaborators have a better understanding of their role in the reporting and responding procedures in cas-es of children’s rights violations now that they have completed this training. They are also better able to recognize abuses and they feel that they can have easier, more efficient conversations with children on the topic of securing their safety or when following up on abuses that have been committed.

We highlight the importance of protecting and respecting children’s rights through training on internal Child Protection Policy for all our co-workers, but also through projects where we share our knowledge of children’s rights with other experts in the social welfare system in Croatia as a whole. We also pursue this subject by participating in conferences and professional gatherings and giving presentations or running workshops.



Once again, we reserved some time during the spring break to hold a Youth Day in the Red Cross Educational Centre in Orahovica. The three-day event was filled with work, fun and laughter. Fifteen young people from four Youth Fa-cilities took part, together with four educators and six young people from our two SOS Children’s Villages.

Youth Day is designed to give our children and young people a chance to eval-uate to what extent programmes and activities in the SOS Children’s Villages help them in becoming independent adults. At the same time, educators get the opportunity to evaluate their own work in terms of how much they support young people in leading independent lives. They are given the chance to tell, in their own words, what works well or less well in this process and to give their suggestions for future activities. Their attitudes and opinions are taken serious-ly and we see them as an impetus to make changes and adjustments. As part of reinforcing this process for our young people, we completed this participa-tory process by giving them feedback on how their suggestions from the previ-ous years have been incorporated into our work and how their suggestions and thoughts affected the quality of our daily work.



Of course, other, equally important aspects of the event included getting to know each other better, spending time together and having fun in various creative workshops, board game tournaments, sports activities and lectures on important issues such as respecting diversity, becoming more aware of one’s own attitudes and values and arguing for one’s own opinions and views in a well-reasoned manner. Young people also got the chance to learn practical everyday skills such as creating their own monthly budget and taking a quiz on grocery prices.

As part of our campaign #be proud of yourself, developed to mark the 25 years of SOS Children’s Villages Croatia, our young people wanted to share with us what makes them proud. Let us quote their powerful messages directly: “I am proud of being a good brother”. “I am proud of being my own person and being accepted as such”, “I am proud of myself for being happy.”



The deeper meaning of this process becomes apparent in our daily work when we look at our independ-ent, accomplished young people. In 2017, 31 young people were in the semi-independent living pro-gramme, designed to make the period after high school graduation easier for the young people. With the support and help of their educators and our other experts, we try to facilitate and ease their way to com-plete independence.

Through the semi-independent living programme we provide counselling and financial support to our em-ployed young people for a period of three years. For young people in college the support continues until they graduate or find a job after college. Young people try to use this period of support to save money, ac-quire new life skills, complete additional formal and informal training courses and find a secure and stable job that will ensure easier and happier future, including finding proper housing. In 2017, we had 14 young people in college and another 14 were permanently employed. Young people who are still unemployed get help and support to encourage and empower them and thus enable them to realize their dreams and secure their future. Eight young people live in three apartments which we have on loan from the Zagreb City Office for Property Disposal.

Every young person in our care has a special story to tell. To mention just a few, some of our young peo-ple are on scholarships, they take their exams successfully, some have completed school in Italy, other have completed courses in diving or underwater photography. Some of our young people visited Aus-tralia where they saw kangaroos and koalas, some sent us their greetings from Ireland and Canada. We are proud of our young person who helps visitors from Peru and who is preparing to travel to Peru soon, and we are proud of all the photographs that show their happy, smiling faces and the faces of their own children and families.

To always maintain the high quality of our work with the young people, we developed a plan for the imple-mentation of System Based Audits, which are designed to monitor how the children’s rights are upheld at all levels of care. In the past two years, we carried out this audit in two Youth Facilities, through inter-views with young people and educators and through review of national and internal regulations.

To ensure the continuation of our existing programmes and implement new activities, in 2017 our Associ-ation continued to develop project proposals and submit them to various calls for proposals at the Eu-ropean, national and local level. To increase our chances of success, in 2017 we organized training on developing project proposals for colleagues from all our programmes. We also took part in the regional meeting of colleagues from project teams in other countries, which took place in Warsaw.



These trainings and good cooperation of our entire team has resulted in 9 project proposals. We ap-plied to 6 calls for project proposals as project bearers and to 3 calls as partners of SOS organizations from other European countries.

As project bearers, we had 5 of our project proposals accepted:

1. ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’ – SOS Mobile Team and Counselling Centre Programme of Activi-ties in the Period 2017-2020; 2. ‘I’ll Step Into Your Shoes’ Cycle III – Prevention of Violence Among Chil-dren, 3. ‘POP – SOS’ – Substance Abuse Prevention, 4. ‘Realizing Children’s Rights’ – Capacity Building for Professionals Working with Children in Alternative Care, 5. #vidime (#seeme) – Equal Opportunities Childhood. Our project proposal to be partners on the project by SOS Children’s Villages Serbia ‘Capac-ity Building for Professionals Working with Children in Alternative Care’ was also approved.

In late December we submitted a project proposal for the improvement of youth employment prospects ‘Youth Employment Enabling Prospects –YEEP!’. If this project is approved, our Association will spend the next 6 years working on youth employment issues in cooperation with 8 international and 6 national partners, among them the Ministry of Demographics, Family, Youth and Social Policy, Ministry of Labour and Pension System, Croatian Employment Service, Croatian Chamber of Commerce, Croatian Cham-ber of Trades and Crafts and Croatian Employers’ Association.

During 2017, we successfully completed 2 projects. In addition to previously mentioned approved pro-jects, we are also running a 2-year EU project ‘Prepare for Leaving Care’ and Johnson & Johnson pro-ject ‘Health for Everyone’, which included 8 training courses in Lekenik, Ladimirevci, Glina and Drinov-ci, attended by 166 participants – expert workers, SOS mothers and aunties and parents from the FSP.

It is very important to note that project teams from SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik and Ladimirevci suc-cessfully submit their projects to local calls for proposals, with help and support of the NPDD staff. All our project proposals are designed to respond to the needs of the local community and our target group. In this way, we managed to secure speech therapy for preschool children in both our SOS Children’s Vil-lages, we boost children’s self-confidence through the Little Fairy Tale Theatre in Lekenik and experts in Osijek-Baranja County provide counselling and psychosocial support for families in their own homes through the activities of the FSP ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’.

All projects that we implement encompass a range of preventive psychosocial and educational activities and occupational therapy activities with the children, parents, child care professionals and they are all supported by our partners from the social welfare system, local community, educational system and the NGO sector. This is further bolstered by the fact that in all the listed projects we collaborate with and have partnership agreements with 25 different institutions and civil society organizations.

Our valuable advocacy efforts in 2017 continued through the implementation of the project ‘Prepare for Leaving Care’, which arose from the shared idea of our international organ-ization SOS Kinderdorf International and 5 national associ-ations of SOS Children’s Villages in Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain and Croatia. The main goal of the project for Croatia is to train 100 professionals who work with young people in alternative care to prepare them as much as possible for independent life after leaving alternative care. We will also advocate for improvements to preparation of all young care leavers, regardless of the type of placement that they were in.



Our partners and collaborators on this project are: Office of Ombudswoman for Children, Ministry of Demographics, Family, Youth and Social Policy, Cro-atian Chamber of Social Workers and Social Work Study Centre at the Za-greb Law School. Youth participation is the integral part of this project, so in 2017 we formed a young expert group, consisting of young people with care experience. This group takes part in preparing all important activities within the project.

Our children’s rights advocate and project lead-er Krešimir and project assistant Bojan held a series of workshops, where our young people could offer their advice on how to prepare chil-dren for leaving care. Young people emphasize a need for equality in decision-making, they rec-ognize the importance of saving money and de-veloping skills needed to find and keep a job, as well as greater integration into the community. After expressing their concerns, doubts and ex-periences at the national level, two of our young people Anamarija and Tomislav had the honour of participating at the international conference in Vienna, where they shared their experiences with young people from four different countries.

The young expert group, which has 15 members, decided to take matters into their own hands and address the topic of leaving care in an entertaining and in-formative manner. As young experts with alternative care experience, they want-ed to create a place where they could gather and find answers to questions of interest to young care leavers and share experiences with care professionals and encourage the general public to discuss the issues of young people leaving care. To do that, they launched a Facebook page Prepare for Leaving Care.

‘We publish photos of our faces with strong messages to encourage young peo-ple to participate in the project and to share their care experiences. In this way we show that we are real, that we are here and that we exist. We support each other and foster tolerance and love’, says Matea, member of the young expert group. Youth participation is extremely important to all project activities. Launch-ing this Facebook page is a proof of good practice in working with young people and indication of how important these projects are in ensuring that youth rights are respected and that young people are being prepared for independent life.

As part of the project, in September and November two 3-day ‘Training the Trainers’ courses were held in Zagreb and Granada, where trainers from Spain, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia and Italy underwent training that will enable them to teach child care and youth care professionals how to prepare care leav-ers for leaving care. Representatives of the young expert group also influenced the training, the work materials and activities by completing the evaluation of needs of young people in 5 countries.



Throughout the year we continued to be very active in sharing knowledge and experiences at the national and international level. Some activities stand out: our ND, NPDD and NAAdv. participated at the IFCO World Conference that took place in Valletta, under the patronage of the President of Malta.

Through our participation at the 8th Conference of Social Workers ‘Social Work in the Changing World’, we had the opportunity to present our advocacy pro-ject in the workshop ‘A Child Protection System that Works for Professionals and Young People’. At the workshop, professionals took part in various practi-cal activities designed to figure out solutions for gaps and challenges detected in policies and practice of leaving care within the existing child protection and child care systems.



The workshop made the following conclusions: more work is needed on the em-ployability of youth and professionals working with young people and existing laws relevant to leaving care should be improved. We need to professionalize foster care, establish systematic monitoring and selection of foster carers and insist on skills needed to build relationships between key workers/caregivers and children/young people.

Following the successful implementation of the project ‘Capacity Building for Care Professionals Working with Children and Youth in Alternative Care’, which ran in 2016 and encompassed 5 regional trainings in Croatia, our international federation SOS Children’s Villages International asked us to organize the same training for our colleagues in other SOS MAs.

As a result, in November our children’s rights advocate trav-elled to Benin to carry out training for our colleagues from SOS West African MAs. In December, he carried out the train-ing for the colleagues from SOS MAs in SE Europe, which took place in Bulgaria.

Despite geographical distances and cultural and economic differences, it was impressive to see equally high motivation and determination in colleagues from both continents. This in turn made us more motivated to ensure that successful exchanges of knowledge such as these take place in the fu-ture as well.

We continue to actively include our young people in advocacy activities. For example, our young people took part in the regional conference ‘Voices of Young People Leaving Alternative Care’, organized by SOS Children’s Vil-lages Bosnia and Herzegovina and youth organization NAUTILUS, where we presented the legal framework for leaving care in Croatia and project ‘Prepare for Leaving Care’. The conference was attended by professionals and young people from the entire region.

During the conference, young people shared their experiences with transitioning to independent life and pointed out which forms of support are most essential to them to make the transition as painless and seamless as possi-ble. By taking part in this confer-ence, we contributed to launch-ing the initiative to create tools for the advocacy campaign fo-cused on changing policies and practice and improving the situ-ation of children and young peo-ple leaving alternative care.



FAMILY STRENGTHENING PROGRAMME ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’ in Sisak-Moslavina County

In 2017, FSPs in Sisak-Moslavina County continued to expand a range of non-in-stitutional social services through projects old and new. The 3-year programmes ran by NGOs working in social welfare field and overseen by the Ministry of De-mographics, Family, Youth and Social Policies in the period 2014–2017 have been completed and programme ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’ has been re-approved for financial support through the call for proposals ‘Development and Expansion of Social Services Network Provided by Civil Society Organizations in the Period 2017 – 2020’. We are delighted that our programme will be able to continue. We plan to continue our collaboration with social welfare centres Sisak, Glina and Hrvatska Kostajnica by improving the quality of child care and preventing child separation in deprived areas of Sisak-Moslavina County that lack available social services.

In addition to activities carried out by our SOS Mobile Team and Counselling Centre, we are also proud of our activities aimed at preventing violence among chil-dren. Through our project ‘I’ll Step Into Your Shoes’ – Cycle I and Cy-cle II, we held 85 workshops in classrooms for more than 1000 students (PS Mladost-Lekenik, PS Glina, PS Sela, PS Gora and HS Glina), covering topics of tol-erance, preventing internet vio-lence, gendered violence etc.

We would also like to share happy news about two new projects in 2017: 1. ‘#vidime – Equal Opportunity Childhood’, launched in late 2017, and aimed at raising the sensitivity of the community to the problems of children suffering from poverty. 2. ‘POP’ – the realization of this project is a result of collaboration with NGO Most from Split. At this moment, the project activities are success-fully taking place in the town of Glina. In just a few short months, POP earned an important place in lives of boys and girls and their young peer helpers. POP – SOS Children’s Villages Croatia includes various group activities where chil-dren learn communication skills, develop their creativity, spend quality time to-gether, receive study help from their peer helpers and, as they say themselves, have a great time.



The FSP team uses all these projects to detect, enthusiastically and professionally, the needs of children, parents, guardians, young people, professionals, teachers and local community.

Thanks to the SOS Mobile Team, in 2017 more than 30 families received ongoing psychosocial support. All the families were referred to our programme by SWCs in Sisak, Glina, Hrvatska Kostajnica and Petrin-ja. We cooperate with all of them closely and efficiently.

In addition to psychosocial support and counselling for families and parents, all families also received ser-vices of individual psychosocial work with children, donations in kind, learning what kind of support they are eligible for, study help, recreational help, organizational help etc.

To illustrate how much the work of our team meant to the families, we would like to offer this quote: ‘Everything they did was incredibly helpful and I would be grateful if they could continue to come here. They helped all of us so much. I can’t imagine it stopping now. It would leave a huge gap behind. They have made such good influence on everyone. They showed us a different side to life. Like I said, I would be thankful if they could continue to come here, because I really need them, and so do the other children and parents”, said one of the mothers at the focus group, conducted in 2017 for the purpose of external evaluation of ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’ programme.

We should also note that the Counselling Centre working as part of this programme was also mobile and that during 2017 it was available to children and parents in their own homes in the areas around Lekenik, Glina and Topusko.

Group activities we do with the children have been well accepted and they show good results. Working in groups is very interesting to children, because in addition to gaining new skills, they also make new friends, spend their free time meaningfully, and they learn more about themselves and others. In the words of one girl: ‘I noticed many changes. Since I started going to these workshops, I am more confident, I laugh when someone teases me, instead of crying and getting angry, as I did before. Somehow I realized that we have one life to live and that we shouldn’t waste time. Freely expressing ourselves and our views has helped me a lot. And I appreciate my parents more now…’ We are motivated and gratified that children recognize benefits of our work and activities we provide for them. Above projects include various group ac-tivities for the children, such as support groups for seventh-graders and eighth-graders and Little Groups for Big Things, in which younger school children develop their self-esteem and communication and social skills. We also held Summer in Lekenik, and, for the first time ever, Summer in Glina.



Some children improved their grades and school results thanks to study help, provided mostly by our wonderful volunteer Marija.

We continued to provide training for teachers and parents, mostly through the project ‘I’ll Step Into Your Shoes’. More than 60 parents learned useful advice on how to improve internet safety for their children. Teachers partici-pated in workshop on how to improve cooperation between schools and par-ents and how to reduce teachers’ stress. We still organize Parenting Schools for the parents.

Our FSP team is known to be creative, so it’s not surprising that they intro-duced an innovation to the programme in 2017. As part of the project I’ll Step Into Your Shoes, they launched a website, available at this link:

http://idem-u-tvoje-cipele.sos-dsh.hr/

The goal of the website is to involve as many beneficiaries as possible and pro-vide them with information and support for the prevention of violence among children. The website features a web comic for children, depicting violent sit-uations that a girl named Dora encounters during a normal school day. The idea behind the web comic is to teach the readers to recognize violent be-haviours. There is also a quiz on violence among children, as well as advice and educational notes on this topic. A corner for parents offers advice and ex-planations on what to do in case of differing perspectives on violence among children. A corner for teachers gets many unique visitors because it has all the materials for the organization of workshops and group work, with detailed descriptions of activities designed to convey important knowledge to children in an engaging and interactive manner.

Gordana DanielNational Programme Development Director

http://idem-u-tvoje-cipele.sos-dsh.hr/



ONE FRIEND

FUNDRAISING AND COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT

The most notable event in 2017 was the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Association and the ac-companying Be Proud of Yourself campaign, designed to raise public awareness of SOS Children’s Villages Croatia. Our Friends Club continues to garner great results and the number of our committed givers who donate on a monthly basis to ensure warm homes for our children and young people is still on the rise.

FRIENDS CLUB

We continued our recruiting efforts in 2017, as well as our efforts to maintain a steady base of donors who are members of the Friends Club.

In 2016, we received help in the form of donations from 30.400 private citizens. Our main focus remains on signing standing orders in direct contact with private citizens, i.e., F2F and D2D.

We continued our collaboration with the agency throughout 2017 and we launched the F2F InHouse pro-ject in May.

We are present in Zagreb, Osijek, Split, Rijeka, Virovitica, Đakovo, Varaždin, Bjelovar. In the course of the year, we had 32 SOS representatives who actively worked on different locations.

We continue to train our SOS representatives in sales and communication skills and educate them about the mission, vision and basic information about SOS-Kinderdorf International. Our training includes ex-amples and practices from other countries that carry out F2F projects. We have reaffirmed that training SOS representatives is always essential and needed.

As for the locations where we raise donations and have private citizens sign standing orders, we are hap-py to have longstanding partners who allow us the use of their premises for promotional purposes free of charge. We are a daily presence in shopping malls, supermarket chains and in public spaces in the cities.

We collaborate with seven biggest banks in our market (Zagrebačka banka, Privredna banka Zagreb, Er-ste & Steiermärkische Bank, Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank, Hrvatska poštanska banka, Raiffeisen Bank Austria, Societe Generale).

PARTNERSHIPS WITH COMPANIES

Although traditional approaches to raising funds, services and products from our partners in the business sector still yield good results, in 2017 we introduced new activities and approached more donors than ever before. Among the recent activities, some stand out: a membership in the German-Croatian Chamber of



Commerce and Industry, cooperation with the Bisnode business database and various events and cele-brations organized by our existing partners, to which we were invited for the purpose of establishing con-tacts with their clients or customers. Throughout 2017, we kept up increased activities and meetings with existing donors who donated smaller amounts. Thanks to our practice of contacting them personally, we have detected an increase in the segment of medium-level donations precisely in this category.

Majority of our existing donors and many of the new ones prefer to donate funds to sponsor annual util-ity costs for one or more SOS families. This is the case with our longstanding partners such as Erste & Steiermärkische Bank, Dr. Oetker, Bosch, Mazda, Medtronic, Merkur osiguranje and Wollsdorf, and recent ones such as Opereta Real Estate. But we also offer different corporate packages with specific project activities as they are very interesting to those companies who prefer to link the donation with the activi-ties that fit the work of the company, their location or their CSR goals, e.g. education (Fondacija Bonartes, Xellia), expert work with the children (Scott Bader) or investment maintenance (INA). As for our health packages, always a particularly attractive option, we struck a 2-year partnership with Johnson & Johnson through their corporate foundation – in addition to funds to cover regular health and hygiene needs of children and their caregivers, through the project ‘Health for Everyone’ we provided trainings on health not just for our co-workers but also for members of families we work with, and we offer preventive pro-grammes on all locations. All participants received valuable donation in the form of hygiene products for children. Our longstanding partners who chose the option of general donation include Medical Intertrade, Kaufland, Pis, Croatian Insurance Office, Intea, Scan projekt and Tetrapak. Our partner the Bagatin Clin-ic traditionally includes us in the D2D platform ‘Helping is Always In’. Together with their business part-ners, they raised funds for the annual sponsorship of utility costs for one SOS family.

At the end of this year, we sent co-branded direct mailing to almost 300.000 clients of two of our partner banks – Erste & Steiermärkische Bank and Zagrebačka banka. We combined our donation requests with the monthly bank statements they receive from their banks. This has traditionally been a very success-ful approach.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a model we continued to implement with our old partners, Colgate-Pal-molive and Kaufland. Sales of kitchen sponges by Rekord-tim are still bringing in valuable income. Some of our smaller partners also chose the CRM model – for example, Kindergarten Snjeguljica from Rijeka donated their income from Italian lessons for their youngest children.

Corporate volunteering is still an activity we use to generate additional income, especially for invest-ments in the Villages (painting houses and carpentry, planting trees, assembling furniture or installing household appliances) or sports or cultural programmes. This has a double benefit of meeting the inter-est of donors, most of whom are either longstanding partners or new partners that show great potential, while also covering planned investment costs in the Villages; at the same time, we ensure the loyalty of our partners and transparency of our work, but we also win over new partners who usually choose to continue collaborating with us after such experiences. One of the most interesting experiences in 2017 were com-puter experts from ReversingLabs, who volunteered to work on our playground and benches in the SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik. They also bought and assembled furniture for 3 SOS houses. But the most impressive volunteering project last year was undertaken by 100 Kaufland employees from their Đakovo store, who repainted all the wooden fences and assembled tailor-made furniture for children’s rooms in the SOS Children’s Villages Ladimirevci. Kaufland received the annual volunteer award from the Osijek Volunteer Centre for the best volunteer project by a company in Eastern Croatia.

In October 2017, we launched Telemarketing for Companies, a new activity where we contacted the companies on the list that the Bisnode business database generated for us using special criteria. Out of



2.700 companies unfamiliar to us, we set aside 148 with highest income to contact by phone. The inten-tion behind each call was to set up a meeting where we could discuss options for collaboration with the SOS Children’s Village Croatia in more detail. We were successful from the start, and by December 31, 2017, we took 13 meetings, most successful being those with Opereta Real Estate and Schrack Technik, which donated financial funds, Tepih centar, which donated household appliances and Unilever, which do-nated household cleaning products. We still have 8 more companies who expressed interest in meeting with us, so we plan to continue this activity in this year as well. In addition to ‘cold calling’, we designed special personalized direct mail for the remaining 2.500 contacts. We received solid income from this, testifying to the value of approaching companies in this manner.

In terms of donations in kind, our most valuable donations of this type are all tied to summer vacations for SOS families. Thanks to private donations, we are able to find accommodations for all our SOS fam-ilies and young people from YFs in both locations. We already mentioned hygiene products for children donated by Johnson & Johnson and household cleaning products donated by Unilever, but we cannot leave out an important donation from INA’s employees. They made sure that every single child and young person in SOS received a Christmas gift. Our long-time partner Vaillant donated water heaters and one of their partner companies covered part of the installation works in SOS Youth Facilities in Osijek. Oth-er donations of note include: diving course and equipment for three young people, donated by the diving club ‘Roniti se mora’; children’s sports clothes and shoes, donated by Pro Sport 98; bicycles and equip-ment donated by Keindl sport; lawn mowers donated by Drezga; schoolbags donated by the Association of Foreign Volunteers; bathroom equipment donated by Nord Produkt; Nike sports equipment donated by Luka Modrić; tickets for Disney on Ice donated by Editus and courses and trainings for young people donated by the women’s club Inner Wheel Zagreb Gradec.

PUBLIC RELATIONS – Report on notable events in 2017SOS Children’s Village Croatia launches the Be Proud of Yourself campaign in honour of its 25th anniversary

2017 will be remembered as the year of celebration for Association SOS Children’s Village Croatia. A press conference held in the teachers’ lounge at the Academy of Music in Zagreb marked the official launch of the Be Proud of Yourself campaign, designed to celebrate the 25 years of Association SOS Children’s Village Croatia.

The humanitarian NGO SOS Children’s Village Croatia has been providing a loving home for children without parental care for the past 25 years. This is a major anniversary indeed, so we decided to cele-brate it in a special way, showcasing our accomplishments through the testimonies of people who grew up in SOS Children’s Village Croatia.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of SOS Children’s Village Croatia, we launched the Be Proud of Yourself campaign, conceived by the advertising agency Imago Ogilvy. The campaign sends a message that we should all be proud of ourselves and of the rooms we grew up in as an important part of our childhood.



It doesn’t matter whether you had a room to yourself or if you shared it with your brother or sister, whether it is still there or if it exists only in your memo-ry. What matters is how this space defined you as a person. For the past 25 years, these four walls in SOS Children’s Villages have been a foundation for the lives of hundreds of children, including Marija, Ivan, Nensi, Daliborka, Marko and Anita.



These young, accomplished, independent adults all grew up in rooms in SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik and Ladimirevci and they are the spokespeople for the campaign. They represent the dedication, work and pride of the Association, in the years past and in the years ahead.

The conference was also attended by the spokespeople for the campaign, who were happy to tell the sto-ry of their childhood in the SOS Children’s Village Croatia. Also recognizing the importance and beauty of the work done by the Association SOS Children’s Village Croatia was the Zagreb Athletic Association, which decided to come in support of this great anniversary.

Media releases



Be Proud of Yourself web page

To promote the campaign, we launched the subdomain http://ponosisesobom.sos-dsh.hr, featuring life stories of our campaign ambassadors. Visitors to the page, i.e. potential donors, are able to donate on-line via the ‘one click’ button, while the main fundraising channel throughout the campaign was the tele-phone helpline.

http://ponosisesobom.sos-dsh.hr



‘I often think about my biological parents and how difficult our life

was. Today I can safely say that I am incredibly proud of the fact that I had

the chance to grow up in the SOS Children’s Village Lekenik. That is why I have my own family today!’

Nensi



TV spots for the Be Proud of Yourself Campaign

In addition to written testimonies of our campaign ambassadors, we also promoted them through short TV spots broadcast on the national TV channels HRT, RTL, and numerous local TV stations: Sportska TV, N1, RITV, TV Istra, OSTV and STV.

Additionally, all the TV sports can be seen on the official YouTube channel of our Association and they are widely shared through social networks Facebook and Instagram. The most viewed TV spot on YouTube (more than 2.000 views) featured brother and sister Ivan and Marija, who grew up in SOS Children’s Vil-lage Ladimirevci.

Media support for the Be Proud of Yourself Campaign

In addition to the previously mentioned TV channels that broadcast the TV spots, the campaign was supported by the print media and internet portals. We received media sponsorship from the newspaper Večernji list and portals vecernji.hr and poslovni.hr. Portals such as jutarnji.hr, telegram.hr, tpor-tal.hr, mojaobitelj.hr, sretnodijete.hr, trudnoca.hr, zena.hr, djecjaposla.hr supported the campaign by publishing promotional articles and featuring static and interactive banners.



Jutarnji.hr - banners

Net.hr and Telegram.hr - banners

City billboards: Zagreb and Osijek

Billboards in Zagreb and Osijek greatly increased the visibility of the campaign. The billboards featured campaign ambassadors inviting members of the general public to donate to children in SOS Children’s Villages and be proud of themselves. Thanks to our collaboration with Zagreb plakat and Europlakat, Be Proud of Yourself campaign billboards were displayed in as many as 30 locations in Zagreb and Osijek in the period from May to September.



Selska Street, Zagreb

Petrinjska Street, Zagreb

Vukovarska Street, Osijek



Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Association SOS Children’s Village Croatia

Fittingly for such a big occasion, Association SOS Children’s Village Croatia marked its 25th anniversary with a joyous celebration. The festivities began in Lekenik early in the morning and continued in the late afternoon with a for-mal program at the Museum of Contemporary Art that delighted everyone in attendance.

Earlier in the day, SOS Children’s Vil-lage Lekenik welcomed the esteemed guests from the international umbrella organization SOS Children’s Villages International, who had a lovely time with their hosts and children as they took the tour of various workshops and enjoyed a delicious birthday cake.

After the morning get-together, the fes-tivities moved to the Museum of Con-temporary Art Zagreb, where the As-sociation SOS CV officials welcomed guests of honor, longstanding partners, donors and friends of the SOS Chil-dren’s Village Croatia who have been supporting the Association for many years to a celebration held under the auspices of the Ministry of Demograph-ics, Family, Youth and Social Policy.

Among many esteemed guests were the rep-resentative of the Croatian Prime Minister and State Secretary at the Ministry of Demograph-ics, Family, Youth and Social Policy Ms. Marija Pletikosa, State Secretary at the Ministry of La-bor and Pension System Ms. Majda Burić, Ms. Višnja Fortuna as the representative of the Za-greb Mayor Mr. Milan Bandić and President of SOS Children’s Villages International, Mr. Sid-dhartha Kaul.



Welcomed by the hosts, National Director of the Association Ms. Višnja Tuškan-Krupić and Association President Ms. Mariza Katavić, the guests who filled the Museum’s Gorgona Hall to capacity enjoyed the program very much. The pro-gram featured welcoming speeches, dance numbers, an excerpt from a play and two short films about foundation and evolution of the Association that has been providing home for the children without adequate parental care for the past 25 years.



Media releases





Big race for little runners from Lekenik

26th Zagreb Marathon kicked off on Sunday, 8 October 2017. The starting line was at the Zagreb central square and a large number of runners took part.

Thanks to the collaboration between the Zagreb Athletic Association and As-sociation SOS Children’s Villages Croatia, during the race the onlookers could learn more about the work of the Association and its Be Proud of Yourself cam-paign at the SOS Children’s Village Croatia information booth.

Organizers of the Zagreb Marathon recognized the idea, motto and the central theme of the campaign, launched to mark the 25th anniversary of the Associa-tion, and they decided to lend us their support.

The 26th Zagreb Marathon children’s rac-es were held a day earlier, on Saturday, 7 October 2017, and kids from the SOS Children’s Village Lekenik were among the participants. Along with the other chil-dren, our Lekenik contingent took part in the races for children ranging from pre-schoolers to sixth-graders, running over distances from 200 to 550 meters.



SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci celebrates the major 20th anniversary

On the eve of the big celebration to mark the 20th anniversary of SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci, a conference called ‘Challenges of parenthood in various families’ was held at the Faculty of Philosophy in Osijek.

Speaking about family and parenthood were: Prof. Ninoslava Pećnik, Ph.D., foster parent Marko Barjaktarević, psychologist Višnja Matić and Dr. Jugoslav Gojković. The conference took place under the patronage of the Osijek-Baran-ja County.

‘What distinguishes Association SOS Children’s Village Croatia is the fami-ly-based care it provides. For the past 25 years, the Association has success-fully implemented its mission of creating families for children without adequate parental care. SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci has been following the same model for the past 20 years. To celebrate these 20 years, we organized today’s conference about the challenges that every family and parent face. Family and parenthood are two main issues that our Association is concerned with, and we undertake all our activities with the firm conviction that every child deserves to grow in a family’, said Zoran Relić, director of SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci.

The conference heralded the actual celebration, and all our co-workers, chil-dren and SOS mothers worked on the preparations diligently. The central event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci took place in the gym of the Primary School Ladimirevci on May 25, 2017.



After welcoming everyone to the celebration, the director of the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci Zoran Relić passed the floor to the President of the Asso-ciation SOS Children’s Village Croatia Mariza Katavić, Osijek-Baranja County Prefect Vladimir Šišljagić and Valpovo Mayor Leon Žulj.

The rich entertainment programme held many surprises, among them the girls from the vocal ensemble Brevis, whose impressive singing performance left everyone speechless.

The story of Lada and Miro, a girl and a boy who live in Ladimirevci, was as touching as it was sincere. Our young people from the SOS Youth Facilities in Osijek appeared together as a rock band named The Odd Couple and got the audience dancing. They were also a warm-up act for the new Croatian sing-ing sensation Mia Dimšić and a genuine rock spectacle, a concert by the band Opća opasnost.

But the festivities didn’t end there. After the formal portion of the program, the celebration moved to the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci. After a delicious lunch and birthday cake, everyone was free to join a number of creative work-shops and outdoor games.



After several hours of creative and athletic activities, the merry caravan head-ed for Osijek, straight to the FC Elektra football stadium, where Humane Stars of Croatia played a charity football game against the Humane Stars of Osijek. Our kids cheered them on loudly and afterwards had the opportunity to meet some of their football and show business idols.



Media releases



Chinese ambassador visits kids in Ladimirevci

SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci received a special visit on the first Monday in July, from an esteemed guest who brought gifts for our delighted children.

The Republic of China ambassador to Croatia, His Excellency Hu Zhaoming and representatives of the Republic of China embassy visited the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci to learn more about the life and activities in the Children’s Village. What is especially interesting about this visit is that this is the ambas-sador’s first official visit outside of Zagreb, where the Chinese embassy is located, since his appointment less than four months ago.

In conversation with the director of SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci, the ambassador spoke of his ideas on building bonds between the two countries, some of which are especially thrilling for the children in SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci, who have been invited to take part in the next year’s celebrations of Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, the most important and longest public holiday in China.

The international SOS Children’s Villages organization is also active in the Republic of China, where they have ten SOS Children’s Villages, nine SOS Youth Facilities, ten kindergartens, one school, two social centers and two youth education centers. We always support the development of children and youth in acquiring new knowledge and skills and discovering new possibilities, so the stated intention of ambassa-dor Hu Zhaoming to establish cooperation between the embassy of the Republic of China in Croatia and SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci is wonderful news for us.

STEM revolution reaches the SOS Children’s Villages

How to make one’s own emoji, thermometer or a touch-based counter? Believe it or not, our kids in SOS Children’s Villages know all of the answers, thanks to a Croatian Makers workshop on micro:bit.

Mr. Bakić launched the campaign to donate BBC micro:bit devices to schools and institutions in Croatia, among them SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik and Ladimirevci. The first programming workshop was com-pleted by our children in late February under the guidance of Vlada Lendvaj.

‘Children in Croatia quite unnecessarily lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to technological education. Today we can count on some really simple learning methods, such as the BBC micro:bit com-puter. This is why we donated 20 such devices to the SOS Children’s Village. Today we are running our first workshop, to teach the children how to use and program these devices. Micro:bit has been designed for educational purposes. This year, all seventh-graders in Great Britain received these devices for use in their everyday lessons in school. So far in Croatia, 900 institutions and schools received packages with 20 devices each. We hope that the Ministry will distribute them to all schools at the beginning of next year. These devices are very useful and affordable, so there is no excuse for them not to become part of every-day lessons”, said Mr. Lendvaj, adding:

‘Children learn so much during the initial workshop. And best of all, they don’t even notice that they are learning basics of programming through play. Tools like these are extremely user-friendly, but their power should not be underestimated’.

Our children enjoyed this educational experience very much. After the 90-minute workshop, they kept ask-ing when they would be able to programme using the micro:bit computers again.



Gibonni’s generosity wows us again

Love is where Gibonni is. One of the best vocals in Croatian music once again proved how big his heart is by performing a benefit concert for sick children. His young fans from the SOS Children’s Village Lekenik also had the privilege of attending.

Thanks to our big donors and friends from INA, 12 delighted children and their SOS mothers had the opportunity to enjoy Gibonni’s concert in the Brezovica Sports Hall in Sisak. The concert was organized to benefit the children suffer-ing from malignant and life-threatening diseases.

INA supported the event with a generous donation, but they also did not forget their long-time friends from the SOS Children’s Village Lekenik, making sure they could enjoy the concert too.

After two hours of singing along with the delighted audience, clearly exhaust-ed Gibonni still found the strength and enthusiasm to spend some time in the backstage with our kids, giving them a memory that they will treasure forever.

Marinka ŠenjugDirector of the Fundraising and Communications Department



ONE MOVEMENT

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Activities aimed at human resources management in 2017 were implemented in keeping with the annu-al strategic work plan for 2017 and in compliance with the long-term strategy ‘Sustainable Path 2020’. Planned activities were completed successfully and progress was reviewed regularly, through the process of strategic reviews. We are proud that we maintained the continuity of progress and professional human resources management throughout this very challenging year.

From the human resources perspective, this business year was defined by three key challenges: sup-porting the organizational development, building the capacity of our professionals and recruitment and selection of new employees.

The organizational structure has been brought in line with the requirements that arise from the implemen-tation of the long-strategy ‘Sustainable Path 2020’. We carried out the review of the organizational struc-ture continually throughout this period – step by step! Organizational changes were made in the Fund-raising and Communications Department, Finance and Controlling Department, Programme Development Department and Human Resources Department.

Fundraising and Communications Department underwent the biggest transformation. It now has two sub-divisions, Corporate Partnerships and Private Donations. In early May we also launched the in-house programme of committed giving/regular private donations (F2F), which necessitated a completely new approach to planning, recruitment, selection and orientation, i.e. training of employees, and to monitoring work performance and the reward system. All HR processes have been brought in line with the require-ments of the in-house programme.

Finance and Controlling Department adopted a new organizational structure through reviews and re-allo-cation of work tasks and responsibilities. The Department also has a new employee, an accountant who is primarily responsible for the accounting support to the committed givers/private donations programme.

Programme Development Department has been strengthened in the segment of children’s rights advo-cacy and the arrival of a new intern has led to the establishment of the Human Resources Department.

Organizational changes were accompanied by the preliminary actions for the communication matrix that we would like to maintain, thus ensuring the clarity and transparency in professional communication and in delegation of tasks that isn’t hindered by the growth of the organization.

To ensure the continuing high quality of our organization’s work throughout the year (and, of course, to improve it in keeping with our professional preferences), organizational changes by necessity affected our capacity building activities too.

We are proud that we participate in regional conferences and international workshops by sharing our good practices, knowledge and skills with the colleagues from the region.



We also took part in numerous conferences, seminars, round tables and work-shops in the country. Our employees (especially our care professionals) pre-sented papers at most of these events, sharing the knowledge and experiences of our organization for the benefit of the entire community. Our SOS colleagues from the other countries came to visit us as part of orientation and field visit programmes to deepen their knowledge in the fields in which we are more suc-cessful, and our employees attended many international SOS conferences as lecturers.

Group and individual trainings were carried out in accordance with the develop-ment plans. Our teams and individuals completed many external and internal trainings and we want to highlight that we maintained high standards for super-visions – both in groups and individually, as required. It’s also worth mentioning that this year’s theoretical training for SOS mothers and SOS aunts took place in cooperation with the local community in Ladimirevci, which is something we wanted for a long time (8 participants – SOS mothers and SOS aunties – com-pleted the nanny training course). For the first time ever, this year we managed to organize a 2-day retreat for SOS aunties, thanks to the donation of external partners. Of course, SOS mothers had their regular 3-day retreat too.

The third key challenge in 2017 was the recruitment and selection of new em-ployees. This area has always been extremely important to our organization, because it ensures the influx of high-quality employees who will carry out the mission, vision and strategies of our organization in a hard-working, dedicated and professional manner.

In 2017 we carried out a total of 46 recruitment and selection procedures and the same number of orientation programmes. These procedures include em-ployees in new work posts, replacements for employees on sick leave, sup-port during periods of increased work volume, employees being switched


48SECTION THREE FACILITY REPORTS

from one work post to another and in-service training schemes that do not include permanent employment. The total number of employees on Decem-ber 31 shows an increase – 26 new hires in comparison to the previous year. Most of the newly-hired colleagues are in the committed givers programme, as SOS representatives. Once again we took advantage of the employment schemes offered by the Croatian Employment Service to augment our teams with 4 new young employees (we used the employment scheme ‘Subsidized In-Service Training Without Permanent Employment’). We also continue to rely on public funding to secure the financing for the employees in our pre-vention programmes.

Our recruitment and selection processes were tailored to needs and opportuni-ties, and as a special challenge (as in previous years) we kept a permanently open call for SOS mother candidates in the effort to secure a sufficient number of SOS mother candidates in coming years, as dictated by our retirement plans for existing SOS mothers.

For our recruitment successes, we owe a special thanks to our longstanding partners – the web portal www.posao.hr, for donating ad space as needed, and Croatian Employment Service, for announcing vacancies, selecting candidates in branch offices around Croatia and for support provided through their employ-ment scheme ‘Subsidized In-Service Training Without Permanent Employment’.

In September we completed the process of electing the director of SOS Chil-dren’s Village Ladimirevci. Mr. Zoran Relić was re-elected for a period of four years.

http://www.posao.hr



Another big challenge, and an equally big joy, came in the form of organizing the celebration of the 25th anniversary of SOS Children’s Villages Croatia, which took place in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb on October 5, 2017. Numerous guests and partners who built this success story with us joined us in celebrating this major anniversary. Their feedback clearly shows that we have every right to be proud of the difference we made in the lives of children and young people entrusted to our care. As part of the celebration, we awarded rings of honour to our SOS mothers and SOS mothers from Albania, Macedo-nia, Romania and Serbia. Pursuant to international guidelines, rings of honour are given to SOS mothers after 10 years of dedicated work. Mr. Siddhartha Kaul, President of SOS-Kinderdorf International, pre-sented the rings to all the recipients.

Volunteer work was as essential to the success of the SOS Children’s Village as ever. In 2017, our vol-unteers worked 2.931 hours for free in various activities (tutoring, sports, music and art workshops…).

Key indicators of success we use to follow the development and quality of the process of human resourc-es management show stability and excellent performance in handling the organisational development challenges, in accordance with the strategy ‘Sustainable Path 2020’ - total turnover = 10.3%; core care co-workers turnover = 7.8%; leadership turnover = 4.7%; voluntary turnover = 2.3%; national manage-ment team= 0%. Experience and knowledgeability of our employees are the foundation of our organiza-tion, so we are proud that 57.2% of our employees have been in our organization for more than 5 years. On average, our employees have worked in our organization for 8.8 years.

As in previous years, at the end of the year the Association SOS Children’s Village Croatia carried out the process of strategic planning based on the “Sustainable Path 2020” strategy. The strategic guidelines that refer to human resources development have been clearly defined for 2018.

In 2018, we will pay special attention to recruitment of SOS mother candidates in the effort to secure a sufficient number of SOS mother candidates as replacement for SOS mothers who will be retiring in the coming years. Other areas of interest will include activities for prevention and maintenance of physical and mental health of SOS mothers and development of tools for the monitoring of the level of commit-ment and satisfaction with the work of our employees. Also, by maintaining existing partnerships and es-tablishing new ones, we plan to maintain the high quality of our human resources management despite limited finances.

Professionalism, expertise and motivation of our co-workers on all levels (especially in new, developing programs) remain as key objectives of human resources management.

Josip MarinkovićDirector of Human Resources



1.2 TIME SCHEDULE OF MAJOR EVENTS FOR 2018

JANUARY National Annual Report preparationPreparation for Audit 2017

FEBRUARY1st NMT MeetingNA Plan 2017- 42nd Review to RO by February 15th

FDC Annual Report 2017 to FDC EUCBFebruary 25th 2018 – 26th SOS CV Croatia Day

MARCH Audit 20171st Board Meeting

APRIL Audit Report for the year 20172nd NMT MeetingNational Mid Term Plan 2019 – 2021 out

MAY 13th B May 25th 2018 SOS CV Ladimirevci Day

JUNE

3rd NMT Meeting27th General Assembly SOS CV Croatia2nd Board meetingAudit report 2017 to ROJune 23rd SOS Children’s Village Day

JULYChildren summer holidays at the seaside1st FDC Report to FDC EUCB4th NMT Meeting

AUGUST Children summer jobs and organized free-time activitiesNA Plan 2018 – 1st Review to RO by August 8th

SEPTEMBER5th NMT Meeting MBF Proposal 2019Final FDC Business Plan target for 2019

OCTOBER3rd Board Meeting October 8th 2018; 25th Anniversary SOS CV LekenikStrategic and Annual Plan for 2019

NOVEMBERFinal Budget Proposal + final FR ratios sheet 2019Audit progress reportChristmas campaign

DECEMBER Christmas celebration in facilities6th NMT Meeting & 4th Board Meeting together


51SECTION TWO BOARD MEMBERS LIST

SECTION TWO

BOARD MEMBERS

LIST


52SECTION TWO BOARD MEMBERS LIST

2.1 LIST OF BOARD MEMBERS

1. Mrs. Mariza Katavić President

2. Mr. Branimir Vlajo Vicepresident

3. Mrs. Lea Sokolić Treasurer

4. Mrs. Tatjana Josipović Member

5. Mrs. Wendy Zečić Member

6. Mrs. Caroline Taylor Member

7. Mrs. Katrin Raie Member



SECTION THREE

FACILITY REPORTS



3.1 SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE LEKENIK

Today there are 73 children living in the SOS Children’s Village Lekenik – 43 are elementary school students, 1 attends high school and 29 are preschoolers. In the course of 2017, 6 new residents joined us, while 13 children left to continue on their path outside Lekenik. Students who completed the 8th grade (a consid-erable number – 8 students in total) transferred to the SOS Youth Facilities, 3 were adopted and 2 transferred to other forms of care.

Early in the year, during the winter break, a number of our children took part in the program ‘Odmorko’ in Zagreb, which offered ice skating for children. In late January, we held a programming workshop for 7th and 8th grades. In February we held the 1st computer workshop as part of the BBC micro:bit project, attend-ed by 12 children from upper grades of primary school. Our traditional Masked Ball was attended by all SOS families and many of our friends and prizes were handed out in several categories. In March we celebrated the arrival of spring and return of storks to our region, once again in cooperation with the local kin-dergarten and the Lekenik Tourist Board. Also in March, fourteen of our children and accompanying co-workers attended the concert about the Lent customs in Croatia, which took place in the Lisinski Concert Hall and we welcomed a new instructor for our weekly STEM workshops. In April we celebrated Easter with our children and co-workers. For children who did not join their biological fami-lies during the Easter holidays, we organized swimming lessons and joint trips to sports games. Our young people celebrated the Youth Day in Orahovica, a three-day event with numerous workshops. Animal shelter in Dumovec held an



educational workshop on communication with dogs and protection of animals and in late April we partic-ipated in the celebration of the Lekenik Municipal Day.

In May we took a birthday trip to the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci, held a workshop on internet safety for fifth-graders in PS Mladost and we celebrated Mother’s Day with our traditional Bike Tour. Par-ticipating in the tour were our children, co-workers and friends of the SOS. In June ten of our children travelled to Prague thanks to our friends in the civil organization Lastavica and many of our children trav-elled to the seaside for a vacation – some to Čabrunići in Istria, others to the island of Čiovo or to Rovan-jska near Zadar. We also took part in the Renaissance-themed chess tournament organized by the Sisak Tourist Board and Sisak Chess Club. Thirty-five of our children and co-workers attended the tournament. The senior co-worker in our child development team attended the international workshop ‘Harvesting’ in Innsbruck, where she listened to inspirational stories from the life and work of SOS colleagues from around the world and contributed her own story as well. In early July, vacations for children continued in Rovanjska and two SOS families vacationed in Sutomišćica on the island of Ugljan and in Stinice. After returning from the seaside vacation, some of the children joined their biological families, but the majority spent August in the Village. We organized a special programme of activities named ‘Summer in Lekenik’ for them and they also regularly went to city pools in Zagreb as part of the programme ‘Okvirko’. We or-ganized camping on the bank of the Una River and in Štefanki Lijevi for two groups of children. On the last day of August, we held a send-off for our young people who completed primary school, saying fare-well before they transferred to Youth Facilities, where they will continue their education in high schools. They all prepared special gifts for their SOS mothers and they still come back to the Village on weekends to share their stories of living in the big city with their SOS families and to enjoy the warm atmosphere of home that their SOS mothers create for them. New school year began in early September. We had 5 first-graders and a total of 43 children in primary school and 1 girl in high school.

In October we celebrated our Village Day, but we are especially proud of our participation in a major event for our Association – the celebration of the 25th anniversary of SOS Children’s Villages Croatia, which took place in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. During the same month we participated in children’s races at the Zagreb Marathon and we launched creative workshops on health in coopera-tion with Johnson & Johnson, as well as the training for children from 1st through 4th grades on the topic of dental health, including teeth check-ups organized by Orbit and Croatian Chamber of Dental Medi-cine, all as part of the project ‘Toothmobile’. In November the 9th Millennium fairy Tale Read-A-Thon took place. All SOS families and co-workers participated and for 24 hours straight we read fairy tales, fables, poems and other child-friendly literary forms. In December we continued our partnerships and friend-ship with PS Brestje from Sesvete. Their students and teachers all took part in the big Christmas drive to gather gifts for children in SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik. Our big Christmas celebration featured our children playing violin, reciting poetry, acting. Participants in the Hobby Art workshop and their in-structor were in charge of gorgeous Christmas decorations in our Social Centre, where the celebration took place. Many of our associates and friends also took part and the second part of the programme was reserved for the SOS Children’s Villages Lekenik rock band Musical Dreamers. For winter break, we organized a range of sports and educational activities and some of the children spent the holidays with their biological families.



3.2 SOS YOUTH FACILITY ZAGREB AND VELIKA GORICA

SOS Youth Facility Zagreb

In the course of 2017, we looked after 14 young people in the Youth Facility in Zagreb – 6 boys and 8 girls.

In our work we dealt with everything that usually accompanies the process of children and young people transferring to the Youth Facility, from familiarizing them with the daily life in the YF and planning their trans-fer, both of which are part of the Little School of Life that they attend as eighth-graders, to individual and group work through which we build our relationships with the young people, where we empower them and strengthen their positive thinking and plan steps that they need to take on their way to independence. Dur-ing the planning process and realization of goals, educators closely cooperate with SOS mothers to make the transition as smooth as possible and facilitate the adjustment of young people to new environment.

In keeping with the 2017 Annual Plan and Programme, in September we visited the Rizvan City Eco Camp, Smiljane, Gospić and Velebit National Park as part of our empirical-pedagogical project ‘Lika 2017’, which has proven to be an empowering experience for the entire group.

This school year (2017/2018) is notable for five young people who will be graduating from high school this year, but in addition to schoolwork and practical training, all our young people are also active in their free time. They take driving lessons, work out, go on nature hikes, train taekwondo and pursue other ex-tracurricular activities.

In our work with young people we pay special attention to educating them about human rights. We teach them to respect multiculturalism and diversity.

During the summer holidays, all young people in SOS Youth Facility Zagreb worked part time. For some of them, it was their first work experience.

We had 5 young people in the semi-independent programme in 2017. Two of them are college students and one graduated this year from the Junior College of Information Technology while also working through the student employment service. Other young people in SIL are gainfully employed, they live on their own and they are responsible about their obligations. They are all continually working on advancing their skills and they are actively seeking better career opportunities.

We have 1 young person in our aftercare programme. She has been on her own for a while now. She is a high school graduate and she also completed additional training for her job in a pet shop.

SOS Youth Facility Velika Gorica

In the course of 2017, Youth Facility Velika Gorica looked after 15 young people, 9 girls and 6 boys. We had 11 young people in our SIL program, 6 of whom are college students, while the remaining 5 are gain-fully employed. Monthly number of young people fluctuated depending on when they completed their ed-ucation and on the arrival of new residents from Lekenik upon the completion of their elementary educa-tion. Our young people once again did well in school, thanks in part to the efforts of our educators and volunteers, who provided companionship and study help for our youngsters.

In September, 4 new residents arrived. Here they learn life skills through daily chores, continue their educa-tion in high schools, participate in neurolinguistic programming workshops, take foreign language lessons



etc. They all came from SOS Children’s Village, following a farewell celebration called Corn Festival. Their SOS mothers entrusted them to the care of educa-tors in Youth Facility Velika Gorica, knowing that they can rely on them fully. To increase group cohesion, we organized a day trip to Daruvar for all of them. While there, we visited a horse farm, where everyone could try horseback riding.

Almost all of our young people had a summer vacations, while some went on graduation trips and school excursions. Throughout the year, groups of our youngsters took part in six-day programmes organized by the Croatian Outward Bound School, which specializes in empirical pedagogy. OWB also organized educational workshops for them. Our young people also participated in a boat operating course. The training in diving and underwater photography for our three girls, donated by the NGO ‘Roniti se mora’ continued throughout the year. They take their training very seriously and we are proud to say that one of them even won first prize in the international underwater photography competition. Our young people were very proactive in finding summer jobs and many also had their mandatory practical training, so we can safely say that they all spend part of their summer working.

Our young people pursue many extracurricular activities, such as football, Zum-ba classes, volleyball, ice skating, going to the gym. Our young people contin-ued to volunteer for Red Cross. We also received a valuable donation from high school students from Velika Gorica, right before Christmas. INA’s gifts were as wonderful as ever and they brought a lot of joy to our youngsters.

We mustn’t forget the money prize given out by SOS, which went to our young person Nensi. Nensi has been independent for a long time, she has her own family and she is very accomplished, so we were happy to celebrate her suc-cess in the Youth Facility. We also took part in the celebration of the 25th anni-versary of SOS Children’s Village Croatia in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and the 20th anniversary of Children’s Village Ladimirevci.

2017 was a dynamic, challenging year with many activities. Thanks to the effort of the YF pedagogical team, it was also a very successful year.

Mario Čović Director



3.3 SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE LADIMIREVCI

At the end of 2017, we provided care for 83 children in 16 SOS families in the Children’s Village. Although 5 young people transferred from the Children’s Vil-lage to two SOS Youth Facilities in September, we had an increase of children in SOS families, due to receiving a large number of referrals from the social wel-fare system. As a result, we admitted 30 children to Children’s Village in 2017. Economic situation in the Osijek-Baranja County, where SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci is located, continues to be very unfavorable, so 2017 continued the trend of young people and entire families leaving Croatia in search of better pros-pects in work and life. Germany and Ireland are still the most popular destina-tions for young and middle-aged people leaving the country. Children referred to us by the Social Welfare Centres tend to come from families that have been on welfare for generations, living in intellectual and emotional deprivation. If the removal of children from such families is delayed for too long, that and the cir-cumstances they come from reduce the possibility of positive outcomes in their development and upbringing.

We fostered the development of children’s interests by involving them in various sports, cultural and technological activities available in our local community. For the third year in a row, Children’s Villages provided the space for the official pre-school programme for children from the local community and children from the Children’s Villages. The programme is ran by the kindergarten teachers form the Maza Kindergarten in Valpovo. It is mandatory for all children in the year leading up to their enrolment in primary school.



Children who attend workshops in the Valpovo Community Center for Technology achieved great results in their activities. In addition to weekly workshops, they also participated in Days of Technology in Belišće and the International Camp organized by the Osijek Community Centre for Technology. Stefanija, one of our seventh-graders, was so accomplished she received a diploma from the Valpovo Community Centre for Technology. We are also very pleased that our children and young people are so enthusiastic about hiking. Forty-two children and young people and 5 SOS mothers took part in 8 hiking trips. Six of our chil-dren earned the ‘Proud Hiker’s Certificate’ and symbolic awards for filling out their hiking diaries. The big-gest challenge and accomplishment was a three-day hiking trip in the North Velebit National Park, under-taken by 8 children and 1 SOS mother. Children interested in art took part in three-day workshops in the international art colony in Ernestinovo, creative workshops ran by NGO Zvono from Belišće as part of the event ‘Bells are Ringing’, the international art colony in Tikveš, Poetry Festival in Babina Greda. Some children attended courses on programming using the micro:bit and Scratch technologies.

At the end of the year, we received a second visit from our friends from the international NGO Fly Be-yond Dreams. These huge flying and aviation technology enthusiasts spent four days with our children, running workshops on aviation, mechanics and aerodynamics which broadened the horizons of our chil-dren considerably.

Annual trips to Prague have become a tradition. They are funded by the civil organization Lastavica from Prague. This was the third year that our children could travel to Prague and enjoy a range of cultural, entertainment and educational activities and plenty of opportunities to socialize with children from SOS Children’s Villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and SOS Children’s Village Lekenik from Croatia. Our generous hosts were full of positive energy and they shared with us some of the most important values in life, such as togetherness, tolerance, sharing and helping others. For ten of our chil-dren who took this trip in 2017, it was a rewarding and valuable life experience.

Once again, summer vacations at the seaside for our SOS families took place thanks to the individuals and tourist companies donating accommodations. One particular donation stands out: we were given the use of a house in the seaside town of Vodice for a period of five years, which enables us to plan the va-cation schedule earlier and allows us to make the best use not only of summer months, but also of the period before and after the start of the tourist season. As for donations in general, Christmas time always generates the highest volume of donations. This Christmas, 14 different companies took part in gifting the children and organizing various holiday activities, such as shows, ice-skating and riding the Christ-mas tram around Osijek.

Psycho-pedagogical plan of working with SOS families was based on family planning, with the participa-tion of the child development team and SOS mothers. During the planning, SOS mothers outline the indi-vidual needs of each child, as well as the needs of their SOS families and their own needs for expert help and support. Activities included individual and group work with children, study help, encouraging partic-ipation and motivating children, promoting and protecting children’s rights. In addition to the child devel-opment team, we also relied on outside help from therapists, volunteers that help with studying and free time, a speech therapist and special education teacher.

Admitting a large number of new children greatly changed the dynamics in most of our SOS families and thus in the Children’s Village as a whole. As another consequence of this, issues arose regarding the be-haviour of biological parents, which led to increased demand for expert support and other types of assis-tance to SOS families. Despite increased demands and challenges in their job, SOS mothers expressed satisfaction with the support they received through self-evaluation tool. In addition to regular supervision and opportunities for individual psychotherapy and support from the child development team, we also

https://www.facebook.com/FlyBeyondDreams/

https://www.facebook.com/FlyBeyondDreams/



organized a three-day anti-stress programme and several two-day workshops for the protection of men-tal health. Following the implementation of the internal control tool, carried out as pilot project in the SOS Children’s Villages Ladimirevci last year, we began preparing necessary protocols to improve our prac-tice of child protection ever further. This led to, among other things, a training for all co-workers on pro-tection of children’s health.

Throughout 2017, we were active in Eastern Slavonia, where we transformed the ERP ‘We Help Restore the Safety of Home for Children and Families’ into a FSP that combines family counselling, individual work with the children and parenting schools to build the capacity of parents and strengthen children. Through this programme we helped 39 families and empowered 63 children. FSP in Vukovar-Srijem County was shut down at the end of the year, so we redirected its human and material resources to the FSP in Osi-jek-Baranja County, which has developed into a significant factor in terms of social services provision in this region in the course of 2017. This programme receives funding from the Osijek-Baranja County.

Our FSP in the Valpovo region provided support for 76 children in 33 families, thus successfully prevent-ing removal of children from their biological families. Through cooperation with two kindergartens from Belišće and Valpovo and primary school from Ladimirevci, more than 30 children attended speech ther-apy thanks to a project funded by the Rotary Club Dora Zagreb.

The most important event for our Children’s Village in 2017 was the celebration of the 20th anniversary of our Children’s Village formal opening. Many of our friends joined us at the celebration that took place on May 25, 2017, honouring our work and commitment to family based care. Co-workers who celebrated twenty years of working for SOS received congratulations and gifts.

At the get-together of all co-workers at the end of the year, we thanked each other, with special thanks to those who celebrated their 5th, 10th and 15th anniversary of working and living in the SOS Children’s Vil-lage Ladimirevci.



3.4 SOS YOUTH FACILITIES OSIJEK AND OSIJEK I

During 2017, we looked after 24 young persons in our two SOS Youth Facilities – 10 girls and 14 boys. Two young people graduated from high school and began living on their own. Five young people trans-ferred to the semi-independent living programme and another five arrived to the Youth Facilities at the be-ginning of the new school year in September, following a traditional day trip for children and young people that also serves as a welcome to our youth programme. Guiding the adjustment of young people were nine educators who looked after all aspects of their development. In the course of this past year, young people also received the support of two psychologists who spent a year working in YFs as part of the in-ternship scheme funded by the Croatian Employment Service. Young people received study help from 4 volunteers, a total of 119 hours that contributed to good grades of our young people. Valentina, who was in her final grade in the Secondary School of Catering and Tourism, where she was training as a wait-ress, won three gold medals and one silver medal at international competitions in Montenegro and Ser-bia. Two of our young people enrolled in the colleges of their choice and they both secured scholarships.

In preparing our young people for semi-independent living, we taught them life skills on a daily basis. In addition to mastering basic household chores, our young people learned to cook simple meals, manage their money by shopping for groceries themselves, grow organic vegetables and fruit in the YF gardens. Creative workshops in which we make gifts for our friends ran throughout the year. In 2017, our young people learned to make natural soaps. They also took part in various workshops: how to use household appliances, how to understand emotions, preparing for leaving alternative care etc. They actively pursued sports and faced outdoor challenges under the guidance of the Croatian Outward Bound School, where they mastered survival skills, hiking and learned about personal responsibility and team work and above all, made new friends and wonderful memories.

Some of our young people once again took part in the Youth Day in Orahovica, where they addressed various issues tied to children’s and human rights. All resources in the local community were used to their full extent – they went to theatre, museums, they attended sporting, musical and film events and some youngsters contributed to the community development themselves, by volunteering at the internation-al gymnastics tournament in Osijek. They particularly enjoyed visiting the Festival of Technology in Osi-jek, the Zagreb Film Festival and Museum of Illusions in Zagreb and the Adrenaline Park in Zlatna Gre-da. Their favourite thing this year was a joint vacation of all young people in the seaside town of Vodice, where they stayed in donated accommodations. The YF educators continually cooperate with the SOS mothers, who give them additional support to empower young people in their schoolwork and preparation for semi-independent life. The celebration of the 20th anniversary of SOS Children’s Villages Ladimirev-ci was notable for one other thing: our young people who already live on their own, many with their own families, also came to celebrate and share their joy with us!

Zoran RelićDirector



3.5 SUCCESS STORIES

MARTINA

Martina and her twin brother came to her SOS family as softly as a butterfly three years ago. Inquisitive, but timid, she explored every corner of the Children’s Village in her own cautious way. She kept a careful watch over her twin brother and made sure they remained on top of their schoolwork, but she was also the driving force behind their gradual inclusion in various extracurricular activities available in the Village. Her curiosity and openness to others soon brought her own special brand of good cheer and success to the SOS house. Today, Martina is the main helper to everyone in her SOS family, hard-working and re-sponsible, always ready to help other kids with their homework and chores. She particularly enjoys learn-ing about cooking, making meals and baking delicious cakes. She is a brave and confident performer who walks the stage hand in hand with her friends from the drama club and she elevates every Village cele-bration when she sings with her rock band. She is a hard-working student with excellent grades because she is determined to become a paediatrician or a veterinarian when she grows up. Between her excel-lent school results and her empathy and care for others, we think she is a great candidate for professions such as these. Thinking of Martina always makes us smile and we are very proud of her.

ANAMARIJA

It has been ten years since Anamarija fell in love with the Children’s Village and vice versa. Every step forward that she makes is welcomed and celebrated. She was a shy and reserved girl who didn’t make friends easily, but today Anamarija has many friends who love to visit her and play with her. Her favour-ite thing to do in the house is to turn up the volume and dance to her favourite music, much to the annoy-ance of her brother, who is two years younger. She enjoys playing board games with the younger children. She is an accomplished majorette and she loves to perform with her majorette band. She is less fond of school, but she is still a persistent, determined student. After study time, she likes to relax in the kitchen. She puts on an apron and bakes a sweet treat with her SOS mother. The next day she is back to eating a healthy diet. Anamarija is easily recognizable in the Village. Her smile may be shy, but it still shows clearly how proud she is of her accomplishments and how safe, accepted and loved she feels here. At the most recent Christmas celebration in the SOS Children’s Villages, she bravely stood on the stage and gave a welcoming address and a Christmas greeting to all on behalf of all the children in the Village.

JOSIP

At the last year’s Masked Ball, Josip put on a suit, a fake moustache, picked up a briefcase and a model of the Children’s Village he made himself and explained to everyone that he came to the ball in the costume of a successful architect. When Josip first came to his SOS family seven years ago, he was a frail and sickly child. His SOS mother took him under her wing and she patiently supported him with schoolwork and ac-companied him to his doctor’s appointments. As Josip grew stronger, he begin to reveal his true inquisitive nature. Josip is a fan of Greek mythology, history and geography and his passion for football is unparal-leled. He never misses a training session, let alone a match. He is a persistent and responsible boy with a very mature outlook, so he usually keeps company with people he can learn from. On the other hand, he also enjoys helping younger children, especially with English, his favourite subject. He says his ambition is to learn the language so well he will be able to dream in English by the time he is in the 8th grade. When he isn’t playing football, he is a bass player in the rock band Musical Dreamers. He still isn’t sure what he wants to be when he grows up – he can’t decide between a pilot, architect or a surgeon. Josip, be proud of yourself. To a boy of your potential and determination, only sky is the limit.



A short story by an employee of the SOS Children’s Village Lekenik

How team work and child participation give the deepest meaning to our work

Last June Ivana Zekić – the senior co-worker in the child development team – attended the international work-shop ‘Harvesting’ in Innsbruck. While there, she took part in storytelling and listening to inspirational stories of life and work told by SOS colleagues from around the world. Her story attracted a lot of attention and it was published on intranet, both as a Christmas story and a promotion of the ‘Harvesting’ workshops.

Celebrating life – organizing a Christmas celebration in my Village

I will tell you a very simple story of a very special day in my life and work. There are no heroes in my sto-ry, no particular drama, no sudden twists… well, maybe just a tiny one at the end.

My story began several years earlier, when I was invited to attend a Christmas celebration in the SOS Children’s Village Lekenik as a guest. The celebration featured performances by children and as I sat there, I felt a surge of energy that made me wonder what it would be like to work in such a special place. A year later, I was indeed working in the SOS Children’s Village. Ever since then, participating in the or-ganization of Christmas celebrations has been the most thrilling part of my year. Nothing makes me hap-pier or prouder. Let me tell you why.

In my Village, preparations begin far in advance of Christmas and every child and adult has a role. Our director gathers us all and gives us his notes, plans and schedules, just like a real theatre director. Chil-dren are the stars and we, the co-workers, are the production team. Children diligently rehearse their roles and routines and their instructors do their best to help them perfect their performances. Our SOS mothers help the children by offering them comfort and encouragement. And they all learn the lines together with their little performers. Expert co-workers support the children and help them chase away the worries and make room for creativity and play.

Several days before the celebration, the Village handymen set up the stage and ladies from accounting prepare treats for the guests. The Village Director makes sure that everyone does their job according to the plan. The entire Village is busy with preparations.

And once the day arrives… our Social Centre exudes warmth and welcoming mood, decorated as it is with Christmas lights and shiny ornaments. We all dress up in our finest clothes and beam with happiness.

Guests start trickling in and the entire Village gathers in the Social Centre. You can feel the excitement and anticipation, knowing that something special is about to happen. We, the co-workers, take shifts at the entrance, smiling, warmly greeting our guests and showing them to their seats. The number of people in the auditorium keeps growing, so now we have to press through the crowd. Children enter the audito-rium, wide-eyed and in awe. Today their SOS mothers and aunties are particularly beautiful and children themselves enjoy wearing their best clothes. SOS mothers and aunties encourage them to take seats and try to calm them down.

Our little actors and other performers are ready and waiting. They hop in place, waving to their SOS moth-ers and aunties because they want to make sure they are seen up there on the stage or they shout out the names of people they haven’t seen in a while. Their instructors stand by them calmly and pretend



that they are completely relaxed, that this is just like any other day. They give children last instructions on what to do and how to look their best.

And when the noise of greetings, kisses and general merriment becomes almost deafening, the lights start to dim, heralding the beginning of something special. Everyone is in their seats and completely qui-et. Children are still looking around and trying to guess what comes next. The director calmly sits in his seat next to the guests of honour. His orchestra begins its performance.

We, the co-workers, slowly move in the semi-darkness of the auditorium as we help the children to the stage. We exchange looks, nod and wink at each other. Everything is going smoothly.

I watch all our little performers and I feel proud and happy. I am delighted when I see four-year-olds singing and older children dancing. Led by the sure hands of their instructors, they bravely walk down the stage. Under the spotlights, some forget their lines. So what? The show goes on amidst the supportive, cheerful clapping. This year, our drama club once again takes everyone’s breath away. In the next moment, the first strains of the violin can be heard. Grown-ups in the audience are smiling, the youngest members of the audience are cheering loudly.

When the show ends, everyone is moved. They applaud for a long time. Among all the glitter, a careful onlooker may observe a tearful eye or two. SOS mothers embrace and kiss their children happily.

In this unending point of time, we celebrate life and all our accomplishments. I wish this moment would last forever.

Later on, we congratulate each other and laugh, sitting and talking long after all the guests have left. Smil-ing faces in the audience and tears of joy can only mean one thing – we touched their hearts. But the au-dience doesn’t know how much hard work went into the preparations, how many obstacles, limitations, fears and uncertainties we all had to surmount. How big this accomplishment really is.

Once again, we had the best Christmas celebration ever. And we did it together.

Ivana Zekić Senior Co-Worker, SOS Children’s Village Lekenik Child Development Team

PAVAO

‘And this is me above the Sun!’ says ten-year-old Pavao while showing a photograph of his trip to Prague. He and his friends spent unforgettable seven days in Prague this summer. While there, Pavao visited the Planetarium that features, among other things, a magnificent model of our star system. An explor-er, computer programmer, painter, actor, hiker, footballer, traveller, friend – Pavao is the shining star of the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci, where he has been living since 2014, when he and his younger brother and two sisters were removed from their family home due to poor living conditions. Thanks to his indomitable spirit, strong character and extraordinary intelligence on one hand and support and love of his SOS mother Andreja Ognjanovac on the other, today Pavao is a cheerful, healthy boy with numerous skills and talents. He expresses his artistic talents through participating in school shows, creative work-shops, art colonies and poetry meet-ups. He is in fifth grade and an excellent student who handles all of his schoolwork with ease, so that it never interferes with his many hobbies and interests, including spend-ing time with his many friends. Computer programming and writing poetry, painting and computers, Lego blocks and theatre – Pavao combines things that seemingly cannot be combined. Still, what he enjoys the most is physical activity. In addition to training football and playing for the local football club, where he



managed to already score several goals despite his small build, Pavao never misses hiking trips. ‘This is Fran, Željka and me on a hiking trip. I can hardly wait for the next one!’ he says as he shows a photo from the most recent trip. In 2015, he, his SOS mother and the rest of the SOS family all joined a hiking soci-ety in Osijek. They already climbed several peaks in the region. ‘One day I might even climb the Himala-yas’, he says humbly as he rests his inquisitive gaze on an empty space in the family photo album, just waiting for another snapshot of our shining star Pavo’s exciting life.

VALENTINA

The story of seventeen-year-old Valentina is truly worthy of admiration and praise.

Valentina was born as the third of six siblings. In 2012, she, her brother and sisters were placed in the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci because living in their biological family was detrimental to their devel-opment. They came into the care of SOS mother Danijela Ofentavšek. Valentina is very attached to her and to this day she spends her holidays and weekends with Danijela, in the Children’s Village.

When she first came to the SOS Children’s Villages as a young girl, Valentina couldn’t have foreseen what kind of future awaited her. After completing primary school in Ladimirevci, she enrolled in the Secondary School of Catering and Tourism in Osijek. At first she wasn’t happy that she was training as a waitress, but her teachers recognized her potential and were determined to help her develop it further. In the first grade, Valentina was already doing her practical training in a five-star hotel in Opatija, and once she had proven her mettle there, she started to go from strength to strength. This summer, she did her practical training in Njivice on the island of Krk. After completing the mandatory training, she stayed on to work for most of the summer season. She impressed everyone with her hard-working attitude and reliability, so the director of the hotel, in agreement with the Ministry of Education, offered her a scholarship for this school year. This also means that Valentina has a guaranteed job there for the next two years. In the meantime, she took part in the international competition in Montenegro, where she won first place and gold medal



for the best table setting, while in Serbia she represented her school and won second place and silver medal in the cocktail mixing category.

We can’t talk about Valentina without mentioning her exemplary behaviour in the Youth Facility. Other young people love and respect her, because she always stands up for others. She is an official represent-ative of the girls in our YF house council. Valentina is a very cooperative and intelligent young person. With the support of her educator, she is busy figuring out her priorities and ambitions, preparing herself for the transfer to the semi-independent living programme.

Valentina has already made solid plans for her future. She plans to work the next two summer seasons in the hotel Njivice on Krk. She also plans to continue her education by undertaking additional training and she wants to go to driving school. We already know how strong her work ethics is and how responsible she is, so we have no doubt that she will be successful. Valentina is very happy with her life in the Youth Facility and her relationship with the educators. In her own words: “I still have a lot to learn”, so she will be staying with us for one more year to make her transition to semi-independence easier.

In other words – Valentina is doing great and she is going in the right direction!

ANDREJA

Andreja came to the Youth Facility in September 2016, after successfully graduating from high school with the qualifications as a sales clerk. Before her move, she lived in the SOS Children’s Village with her sisters and brother in the SOS Plum House. Her SOS mother Danijela looked after the whole SOS family as a real mother, giving them love and every possible support.

Andreja came to the SOS Children’s Village as a fourteen-year-old. She attended the seventh grade at the time. She was diagnosed with diabetes type 1 just a year earlier. Her condition required special med-ical measures, including self-administration of insulin. Given the demands of this situation, especially for a child who was still in primary school, the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci child development team decided that it would be best for Andreja if she remained in the SOS Children’s Village until the end of her high school education, so that her SOS mother Danijela could support her and monitor her medical care. After all, Danijela had the best insight into what Andreja needed.

During her life in the SOS Children’s Villages Ladimirevci and later in the Youth Facility, Andreja grew into a highly independent and responsible young person. Her warm, helpful, joyful and considerate nature in-spired trust and respect in other youngsters, who often came to her for advice and always listened care-fully to her insights. Not content with her high school diploma, Andreja also completed a training course for a nanny, a testimony to her motivation, confidence and will to find a job. She patiently sent out job ap-plication after job application, waiting to be called for an interview and finally her wish came true in the spring of 2017, when she was invited to interview for a job in a renowned Osijek company that produces and sells orthopaedic supplies. Her straightforward, honest attitude and integrity were apparent during the interview and she got the job. She was overjoyed because she could finally start working on her plans in earnest, including moving in with her boyfriend.

SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci made sure this young person could realize her potential and it will continue to support Andreja as she moves closer to fulfilling all her hopes and dreams.



TOGETHER FOR A HAPPY AND CAREFREE CHILDHOOD IN 2017

SOS KINDERDORF INTERNATIONAL

• international organization that looks after 2 million children in 135 countries worldwide

SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE CROATIA

• 169 children live in 31 SOS families in Lekenik and Ladimirevci

PROJECTS• 2.100 speech therapy sessions for

more than 320 children• 82 workshops on prevention of peer

violence for 850 primary school students• website and Facebook page on peer

violence with more than 2.000 unique visitors

SOS YOUTH FACILITIES• we look after 37 high school students and 25 young people in the semi-independent program in

Zagreb, Velika Gorica and Osijek

FAMILY STRENGTHENING

• through our 6 projects we provided 4.373 services for 272 families

• we worked with 436children and young people

• we crossed more than 175.000 km for the sake of family

• we gave more than 65 lessons in the School for Parents

•we established 2.137 contacts with other services

HIGH QUALITY LEISURE ACTIVITIES

• 1.500 hours of creative and educational workshops in the Hermann Gmeiner Social Center

• SOS Children’s Village Lekenik’s Little Fairy Tale Theatre held more than 380 rehearsals

with 60 children and adults and gave 10 public performances in front of 1.400 spectators

• 50 children and adults from the SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci took part in the activities in the

local community, 25 children and 5 SOS mothers went on 5 nature hikes, 20 children completed

training in Scratch and micro:bit programming • 130 social welfare professionals took part in the

conference ‘Challenges of Parenting in Different Families’, held to mark the 20th anniversary of the

SOS Children’s Village Ladimirevci• 36 primary school students prepared for a more

independent life in the future by completing the Little School of Life

• 1.330 volunteer hours

FOR CHILDREN’S RIGHTS• we are implementing the project ‘Prepare for

Leaving Care’ for more than 100 professionals from various segments of the social welfare system

• 22 conferences and 4 round tables aimed at promoting the advancement of children’s

status in society• participation in 2 projects with 8 other

organization to advocate for the protection of rights of children and young people in

alternative care



ZAGREB ° National Office of

Association SOS Children’s Village

Croatia° SOS Youth Facility

VELIKA GORICA ° SOS Youth Facility

LEKENIK ° SOS Children’s Village Lekenik ° Family strengthening program ‘A Loving Home for Every Child’ and Counseling Center for Children, Youth and Family° Speech therapy

GLINA° Family strengthening

program ‘Family Corner’ ° Speech therapy

OSIJEK ° 2 SOS Youth Facilities

LADIMIREVCI° SOS Children’s Village

Ladimirevci ° Family strengthening program

and Counseling Center for Children, Youth and Family

° Speech therapy

THANK YOU FOR HELPING US SECURE A LOVING HOME FOR

EVERY CHILD!

SOS Children’s Village CroatiaZavrtnica 5, 10000 Zagreb

Phone: 01/461 82 06E-mail:

[email protected]

SOS Dječje selo HrvatskaZavrtnica 5 / III10 000 ZagrebHrvatska / Croatia

T +385 1 4610066+385 1 4610067

F +385 1 [email protected]

M.B. 03824713OIB 40473432889račun: 2402006-1100071558

A Loving Home for Every Child


2017

Documents

NATIONAL 20 ANNUAL 17 REPORT - sos-dsh.hrsos-dsh.hr/include/pdf/HR-Annual_Report-2017.pdf · NATIONAL ANNUAL REPORT 2017 SECTION ONE ANNUAL REPORT 5 1.1 SUMMARY OF SOS CHILDREN’S