“It is a human right for a child to grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love, and understanding.”
– UNHCR, 1989
Current situation
It is a fundamental human right for a child to grow up “in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love, and understanding” (UNHCR, 1989). Yet almost 5,000 children in Slovakia do not grow up within their families, but instead live in centres for children and families (formerly known as children’s homes).
Institutional care cannot provide what these children need most: a close relationship with an adult who spends time with them and is not paid to do so. As a result, many young people struggle to integrate into society after leaving these centres and often find themselves living on its margins.
Solution
The BUDDY programme supports children and young people who cannot grow up in their own families and complements the foster care system. The programme identifies, selects, and matches volunteers with children from centres for children and families, while providing ongoing professional support throughout the relationship.
Volunteers contribute their most valuable resource: their time. By spending their free time together, children and volunteers build relationships based on trust. These relationships can be transformative, providing emotional support and helping to meet the individual needs of each child while guiding them as they find their place in society.
The “Your Buddy” programme recruits, trains, and supports volunteers who provide individual, long-term support to vulnerable children who are unable to grow up in their own families.
The VGP Foundation supports a project led by Tvoj Buddy in Slovakia that helps include more children in the programme and recruits new volunteers who will accompany these children on their journey towards integration into society. The volunteers are carefully assessed and trained under the professional supervision of psychologists before being matched with a child to become their “buddy”.
The project envisages the inclusion of 35 new children before March 2022, matching them with their buddies and organising events such as Buddy Day and the Buddy Christmas party.
The VGP Foundation has also decided to finance related research that will assess the programme’s long-term impact on participating children through regular interviews.
