The Steering group of the Sunshine Appeal have pleasure in naming the recipient charity in Prague for our 56th Consecutive Donation. www.pink-crocodile.org
Please see below for some further information.
Pink Crocodile is a charity supporting children with special needs in Czech Republic and India. Both projects are run separately and have different sponsors.
In Czech republic we specifically support a community of server complex needs children and their families who receive little or no help from the state. After having offered for over a decade a once-a-week education and therapy programme for these children, we established a full-time school to accommodate the kids long-term and give the parents, who would often have to stay home with the children an opportunity to work. The Czech school system has still a shortfall of education possibilities for these children and supports schools like ours with insufficient funds.
We are a special Kindergarten and Elementary school registered by the state, however we are run privately, so we can add additional staff and services for our children and ensure their best possible education and development. Currently state funding covers only 30% of our cost (and this is the maximum the school could get and should be able to survive on such a low budget – crazy) so that we have to make up the shortfall through minimal tuition fees (ca. 10%) and the remaining part through donations (60%). In Czech Republic raising funds is really hard work, as the culture of giving is very different than that of the UK or the US, for example.
We would be more than happy to use your funds for the benefit of our Pink Crocodile School in Prague and help finance one of our music therapists and speech and language therapists, which the children greatly benefit from. Most of our children are not able to communicating verbally, so it is important to stimulate them with alternative methods, such as music or Augmentative Alternative Communication tools and help them to express themselves.
We are a unique school as we are focusing on sever disabilities. Our children for instance suffer from one or more of the following conditions:
Autism spectrum conditions
Deafblindness / multi-sensory impairment
Hearing impairment with additional needs
Profound and multiple learning disabilities
Auditory processing disorder
Hearing impairment including cortical visual impairment with additional needs
Additional medical needs including progressive and degenerative conditions
Although the conditions of the children are very sever, we don’t want to make people feel sad about the children. It is more the opposite we want to achieve and show people that the kids can also be happy and be an integral part of our society. In the posters attached you can see some examples of our campaign for integration and against discrimination of disabled children. We believe that the children can do everything their lucky peers can do, just need a bit of help.
We do a number of extracurricular activities with the children, such as running the half and full marathon in Prague with the kids in special sports wheelchairs. This is always an exciting event for both the kids and parents, as they see their little ones enjoy themselves in the crowed.
As an international team (we have a team of Czechs, Slovaks, French and German, British and American) we are also promoting cultural learning. We celebrated in the past Spanish day, Italian day, Asian days, American day, etc. where we learn about music, food and traditions of these countries. A Scottish day we did not have yet and would be happy to integrate this into our curriculum when you are in Prague. I am sure the bagpipes would be something very special for the kids to hear :-). We would also organise some promotion for our social media to present your organisation.