ambassadors without diplomatic passport I am an artist so the challenge for me was how to make use of my inclination to painting in our projects. Each year we organized an art competition associated with the development education for children from six to ten from all over the Czech Republic. One year, the total participation at the competition reached seven thousand schoolchildren! Poor postwoman, who was bringing stacks of drawings from all over the country. I think that thanks to this competition I managed to raise young peoples’ awareness of what globalized world means and that we are a part of it and that it also places responsibility upon us. I also remember the garden project in Gobi Desert in Mongolia. How fantastic is the discovery that you can grow carrots and onions in the desert! Due to the climate change local cattle herders lose tens of thousands of cattle and thus their living. Of course, it is not easy to change the habits of people living in the saddle into the settled farmers in a few years. I have an amusing experience that describes the situation well. We had to guard a pile of manure for three days and three nights in a row so the locals would not use it for heating in yurts. They did not understand that manure can just be dug into the ground. However, despite such mishaps, the most important result is that the people in the desert region have thanks to their gardens means of living and they stopped moving to Ulaanbaatar only to increase the number of people unemployed and thus dependent only on humanitarian support from the outside world. People can stay in their homes and that is always good. ADRA promotes the concept of every day volunteering by claiming that even two to three hours of volunteer work per week are substantial. “A Coin per Day Project” shows that even for 30 CZK per month you can buy one dose of a special diet for a child suffering from malnutrition. How successful are you in overcoming the myth that volunteering and humanitarian aid represents years of work without wages or requires large sums of money from generous donors? I feel that I belong to the society class that is not extremely wealthy. I know what it means to work hard and barely make it to meet the ends. From this perspective, one could say: „What more do they want? How can we support someone thousands of miles from us? We have enough of our own problems.” The alternative point of view takes into account the real world poverty to the south of us. Without any doubts it confirms that we have very high living standards. The challenge remains how to explain this to someone who has just lost their job! Statistics clearly confirm that the most generous donors are not the most wealthy ones, but people who have crossed threshold of their active working life. We have observed for two decades that elderly people do not contribute enormous amounts of money, but tend to contribute regularly. And that is what we want to teach the whole Czech society. Czech citizens are generous in times of humanitarian disasters, particularly when the event is portrayed by the media. Our generosity ends up with the last TV coverage.
So much misery could be relieved just by remembering that someone else is suffering. That is also true about volunteering. Just spending two hours per week with someone who does not have anyone else to talk to throughout the whole week is a remarkable achievement. According to our experience, the person volunteering also benefits from the very act. I believe that this is the opportunity for those who cannot afford to support someone in faraway countries. Just visit a retirement home! Imagine how much suffering of people coming close to the end of their lives could be spared, if we were just willing to spend an hour of our time per week talking to them. ADRA will be celebrating 22 years of its existence in the Czech Republic in 2014. What has improved in humanitarian work and in which areas there is still a space for improvement? I think that organizing and coordinating humanitarian aid during disasters has achieved high level. ADRA has trained teams, as well as available specialists and coordinates its activities with other emergency services, as well as other nongovernmental organizations. Since ADRA is an international organization, we can very quickly intervene anywhere in the world in case of humanitarian disasters abroad. For example, the recent tragedy in the Philippines proved the advantages of networking cooperation. ADRA Philippines was able to organize the assistance very quickly and thanks to Czech donors we were able to provide the much needed financial support. However, there is still a lot to learn. Part of the world that we have grown accustomed to label as “developing countries”, is really changing and rapidly developing itself. The current trend is that in continuation of the support to developing countries, it is necessary to give more space in decision-making and strategic orientation to the local people. We cannot be the ones who know everything and so despite the good will we look like mentors or patronizing older brothers. There is already sufficient number of educated and experienced locals having advantage of knowledge of local needs and conditions of their home countries. Thanks to our long-term assistance we are well on the way of getting the local people to help themselves. Your book is not so optimistic when compared to your paintings. Was this intentional? I do not know. My friend who I invited to my book launch told me the same thing. I had the need to tell the world that pain cannot be deleted from life completely, however, it is possible to share it and help to carry it with others. We call that “solidarity” today. Excessive individualism and stress on consumption casts us into isolation, which sometimes causes far more suffering than the need to have a running water in the household. I do not think that our higher standard of living can protect us from pain and can give us what everyone desires – feeling of satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness. From the part of the world that we call developing countries, I have learned to perceive pain and suffering as a part of life. This does not mean that I would stop fighting the causes of pain, but some-
TO BE CONTINUED WITH OTHER AMBASSADORS WITHOUT DIPLOMATIC PASSPORT
how I reckon that our world is far from being perfect from the beginning to the end. Coming across pain has taught me to approach problems and their solutions with greater humility. In 2013 you began working with the Endowment Fund IMPULSE for patients with multiple sclerosis. Why did you choose this particular fund? I was approached by the representatives and I realized how disproportionate is the degree of difficulties of people with multiple sclerosis and how poor the general awareness of the disease in the society is, so I decided to go for the challenge. I do not want to diminish the tragedy of AIDS disease, but the fact is that the number of patients with multiple sclerosis in our country is ten times higher than AIDS patients. It is an incurable disease and still no one can say with certainty what the main cause is. Patients with multiple sclerosis are women by two thirds, most commonly between ages twenty and forty. The multiple sclerosis is being more and more often referred to as a lifestyle affected disease, its outbreaks being caused by stress, smoking, simply by the hectic way of life in our time. In addition to expensive medication, which is in most cases covered by insurance companies, patients very much need physiotherapy and psychotherapy, which in most cases insurance does not cover. The Endowment Fund Impulse is trying to provide these services thanks to its donors and supporters. I believe that I have a gift or ability to reach others, so I have started to provide communication and PR for IMPULS. What would you like to conclude with? This question has caught me a bit by surprise. The conclusion is of course important. I know that from the time of my working in radio „All’s well that ends well”, goes the old, well-known proverb. One is supposed to conclude with something wise and useful. Something like what our moms used to tell us when we went to school in the morning. “Do not step in the puddles, take off your cap only while at school and do not fight with anybody”. What important advice! But at the time we did not take it seriously. How long it took us to understand that it was a sign of boundless affection from our mothers to us as their most precious beings. Perhaps this conclusion will sound too sentimental, but why not. I have reached certain age! Do not be afraid to show affection to those you care about, and do not be afraid to receive affection from others. Despite our time of consumerist individualism we have been made to belong somewhere and to someone. Of course, this means that in some way we have to limit our personal freedom to reflect the freedom of others. But only through those we meet and who we call, according to the Old Testament, neigbors, we may experience the “fullness of life“, again a term used by the same ancient book. Written and translated by Linda Štucbartová ■ český překlad naleznete v elektronické verzi magazínu na www.leadersmagazine.cz
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