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The Missing Lunch is Only Half the Social Problem

Every 30 CZK received from our donors to the transparent account of the nonprofit organization WOMEN FOR WOMEN, which my husband Pavel Tykac and I have been running for 9 years, pay for a warm lunch for a child in need.

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However, it’s not just about buying groceries. A gift from people who are compassionate and think of others has a significant impact on developing a child’s character and personality. During social integration, a contribution significantly helps if a child can have regular meals in a nearby community thanks to this donation.

Thanks to this gift, not only does a small schoolchild not miss a meal, but they also don’t miss out on the company of their peers in the school cafeteria. They are not excluded from the group, and they don’t feel like an outcast. This has a significant social effect for the future, which our society needs. The situation of low-income families in the Czech Republic is dramatically worsening and will get even worse.

Providing lunches to low-income families under the name W4W: Lunches for Children started in 2013. At that time, 370 children needed it. Today, we take care of warm lunches for almost 13,000 children from all over the Czech Republic. This is a frightening number – for a better perspective, it’s like a city the size of Rokycany where no one could have lunch due to poverty.

Only thanks to the long-term willingness of our sponsors can we satisfy this enormous number of children. I am incredibly grateful to all of you who make this extensive social program possible, and I also thank those who are currently deciding to support it with great humility. You can find more information on our website: https://www.obedyprodeti.cz/.

W4W: SOS to Kindergarten – A Project for Hungry Children in Two Regions

The nonprofit organization WOMEN FOR WOMEN has been monitoring the deteriorating situation of poor families throughout the country for nine long years. For nine years, together with my husband Pavel Tykac, we have been running the program W4W: Lunches for Children, designed for primary schools. Currently, we meet the needs of nearly 13,000 children who would have to skip lunch without our support. The program works well in all regions, but in the poorer ones, it naturally has a much larger number of little “clients” than elsewhere.

This inspired us to think on a broader scale. If there are so many families who can’t afford to pay for their children’s school lunch, it’s highly likely that this situation also affects families whose children are still in the kindergarten.

Therefore, we used this year’s grant call from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports to support children in preschool education in the Karlovy Vary and Usti nad Labem regions. We have created a pilot project W4W: SOS to Kindergarten for all kindergartens in these regions, providing pre-school children from the poorest families with snacks and lunches.

We are currently looking for kindergartens struggling with this situation because the parents of their children are in difficult financial situations. Do you know of any? It’s enough for a kindergarten to send us a signed request, and we will contact them immediately. You can help too. Please provide them with a link to our website: https://www.obedyprodeti.cz/.

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