Petrklic help, z.s. is a civic association founded in 2005. The seat of the organisation is in Český Těšín – city divided by the river into Czech (Český Těšín) and Polish part (Cieszyn). It lies in the heart of the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia. The combined population of the Czech and Polish parts of the city is around 60,000 (25,000 in Těšín, 35,000 in Cieszyn). We are located at the border with Poland and close to Slovakia.
Petrklic help, z.s. employs 2 full-time and 5 part-time employees, but a great majority of our work is performed by volunteers.
Our motto: PETRKLIC HELP is a platform for creativity.
Our mission: We support young people by offering them space for realizing their own ideas and developing skills.
Our values:
- We believe in the capabilities of young people.
- We strive for having a personal approach to every young person.
- We offer innovative, creative, highly-developed programs of non-formal education
- We welcome all young people and we listen to their ideas.
- We co-operate with other organizations and value their work.
Within the scope of the organisation’s programme we offer: international cultural events (events: The Earth Week – festival on ecology, the multicultural festival connected to the tea culture “Svatek caje”, Outdoor film festival, Film festival on human rights: Watch docs, Extreme sports film festival) International youth activities within the Erasmus+ program – youth exchanges: Backpack journalism camp, Young People’s Business, Youth exchanges and youth workers trainings. We also give youth opportunities to realize their own ideas by providing them financing opportunities.
Within our activities we focus also on local, nationwide activities like: Nationwide school magazine competition, meetings with travelers, healthy lifestyle events, tea degustations, mongolian yurt tours, creative recycling workshops, community gardening in our city.
Petrklic has an english library counting 340 books on art and cultures, environment, philosophy, religions, crafts and DIY, photography, children stories and novels. These books are located in the City Library Trinec and workshops connected to the books and reading are performed: English movie screenings, bookbinding workshops, public reading, Living Library, meeting with authors.
Petrklic help runs two different places located in two different towns focusing on: One on a creative and cultural center – Laja connected with the teahouse on a castle hill in the border town. Activities organized by the association are concentrated mainly there. The second place is an eco farm social enterprise PidiFarma Petrklic that focuses on ecological and educational activities, ecological festival and Forest school Petrklicek for children from 3 to 7 years.
We developed urban gardening idea helping people realize that it is possible to grow their own mini garden in the middle of the city. This leads to realization what has to be done to create garden and grow vegetables in large scale. Since the successful project in 2014 we try to continue the urban gardening idea focusing on different modifications.
Petrklic’s activities can be divided to two different categories. Regular and the occasional ones. All the activities connected to the organization are relevant to the future participation in the Erasmus+ program.
Main activities:
Connected to youth work:
– lectures, workshops, educational events (Meetings with travelers – evenings, movie evenings – social inclusion, multicultural workshops connected to different countries, culinary events with volunteers, food degustation). Focus group: youth within 18-30 years old and wider public.
Connected to social enterprise
– ecological and permacultural farming, seasonal activities – sowing, garden cultivation, making homemade jams, harvesting the crops, natural building activities – strawbale building, mud building.
– international youth exchanges for people who are mainly interested in particular topic e.g.: Youth democracy project, Backpack journalism camp, Young People’s Business, Youth exchanges.
Occasional activities:
– cultural events e.g. multicultural festival “Svatek caje”, eco-oriented festival “Earth week”, “Outdoor film festival”, “Pidi-festival” and “Pumpkin season” connected to the Ecofarm social enterprise activities, – the mentioned events are occasional but their preparation consume more than six months.
– thematic exhibitions, concerts.
– international youth exchanges for people who are mainly interested in particular topics ,mainly: Journalist camps, Youth democracy projects.
Apart from the above mentioned regular activities Petrklic help also realizes other activities like trainings for youth workers, participates in partnerships and cooperates with other non governmental organisations in its region.