ABOUT CARITAS

Caritas is an international charity organization of the Catholic Church. It aims to help all people. It asks others that have to give the ones that don't. The goal is to allow each person to live a life of dignity.

Just like the Samaritan (Luke 10, 29-30), Caritas travels the world and, everyone who is found broken, wounded, or in the gutter, gets cleaned and their wounds bandaged. All this without asking about their provenance or destination, their names or languages. He just bandages their wounds and gets them on their feet without ordering them where to go, or which path to take in the future, and without asking for anything in return.

The Mission of Caritas

The mission of Caritas is to actively advocate social progress, physical, spiritual, psychological and social well-being, as well as social justice and improvement of the quality of life in different areas, and to develop solidarity among people regardless of their social background, race, religious, ethnic, national, gender and other differences, through Christian charity and altruism.

Field of work

Caritas BN is active in several areas of life: social service, work with the youth, health, education, emergency assistance, development of the civil society, economic development (development of social economy).

The target groups of Caritas BN are: the young, the disabled, the elderly, the socially endangered, the unemployed. All the activities of Caritas Barske Nadbiskupije are realized in: Bar, Ulcinj, Podgorica, Tuzi, Golobovci, Niksic, Cetinje, Rozaje, Plav and Gusinje.

PROJECTS of CARITAS BN

• Strengthening civil society
• Home care and home assistance for the elderly
• Home care and home assistance for people with disabilities
• Daily center for the elderly
• Hot meals for the elderly
• Help and support for children and young people with disabilities in the field of education, treatment and social integration
• Information and Education Centre for Youth
• Summer camps for teens
• Remedial classes for children in elementary and middle school
• Computer School
• Foreign language courses
• Preventive education of youth on substance abuse
• Center for Education and Communication for Roma children
• Development of youth work in the community
• Promotion and development of volunteering
• Promotion and development of social economy
• Food and hygiene aid

Each month, over 2500 people get help through various projects and activities.

 

Caritas Czech Republic

Caritas Czech's rich history of helping the poor and the suffering began during the First Republic in 1919. Since then, despite a moratorium of its services during the communist era, Caritas Czech Republic has become the biggest nongovernmental provider of social and health services in the Czech Republic and has expanded its projects abroad to include humanitarian aid and development in countries such as Indonesia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Moldova, Serbia, Kosovo, Ethiopia and Zambia.

Caritas Czech Republic engages in over 300 social projects and has become a fixed part of humanitarian aid projects around the world. Domestically, they opened hundreds of social and health services to foreigners in distress and established the first hospice to attend to the terminally ill. Its grassroots approach to raise charitable donations includes the largest volunteer project in the Czech Republic called the "Three-Kings Collection" which is a collection of 14,727 cashboxes that generate millions of Euros every year to support local charities, diocesan projects, and provides relief to humanitarian aid projects such as the devastating South East Asia tsunami in 2004

Whether at home or abroad, Caritas Czech Republic has been instrumental in launching disaster and relief programmes. Following the severe floods in the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, the agency distributed food, water, clothing, medical care, and planned reconstruction activities. Internationally, for 4 years Caritas Czech Republic collaborated with several communities in the Indonesian region of Aceh to help them achieve a sustainable livelihood after enduring through a 30 year-long armed conflict and a devastating Tsunami in 2004.

Caritas Czech Republic's main office in Prague employs a staff of approximately 6,900 employees, 5,220 long-term volunteers and more than 50,000 volunteers for the Three Kings Collection. Caritas Czech consists of 8 dioceses and about 350 parishes that all sit within the auspices of the Czech Bishops Conference.

In 1995, Caritas Czech Republic became a full member of Caritas Europa and the Caritas Internationalis confederation. Key to the success of Caritas Czech Republic has been the ongoing collaboration work with the Caritas network, such as Caritas Spain, Caritas Germany, Caritas Australia, Caritas Mongolia, Catholic Relief Services USA, Caritas Denmark, Caritas Italy, as well as many others.

Caritas Germany

For many years Caritas Germany has been implementing actions in the field of home care and health services in Eastern Europe. The actions were mainly located in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Bulgaria.

After the profound changes in the social and health care systems of eastern European countries following the breakdown of many socialist governments in the 1990s, new health care systems are still very much in the developmental stages. The intention of Caritas has been to take care of the people within communities for only as long as the state fails to do so. Therefore, the goal of all the actions undertaken in the above countries by Caritas was to establish structures of modern home care in order to provide professional help and care for elderly, ill and people with disabilities who very often live alone without their family and in neglected run-down houses.

The "Deutscher Caritasverband" (German Caritas Association) was founded in 1897. It gave rise to all other Caritas organizations worldwide. In 1916, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Germany declared it officially as the social wing of the Catholic Church in Germany.

After first focusing on social projects in its own country, "Deutscher Caritasverband" later implemented an international department called "Caritas Germany" which is involved in disaster response and supporting social programs worldwide. Support for relief and rehabilitation work during and after disasters, support (financially as well as advisory support) of social programs for disadvantaged children, people with disabilities, for the empowerment of women, for elderly people, various other social programs in 165 countries of the world.

The social work of Caritas in Germany is organized and coordinated by 27 diocesan Caritas organizations guided by its headquarter in the city of Freiburg. Caritas has more than half a million staff working in Germany and about half a million volunteers. The international department of Caritas Germany is working with a staff of about 70. We work with Caritas partner organizations in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. The Cooperation between Caritas BN and DCV started in 1991 during the war in former Yugoslavia through providing emergency aid like food, hygienic items, clothes etc.

In the last couple of years, there have been cooperation and joint programmes carried out in the field of social assistance, mainly within programs of homecare for the elderly and supporting centres for children with disabilities.