Having commenced our volunteering charity work spontaneously, we gradually realized it was necessary to decide how to proceed. Our decision to provide social services on a professional level was unanimous, and thus we soon conceived out first concepts.
Each of our social programmes is conceived in modules, and it is being completed and put more precisely according to the processes and needs in the society, in accordance with our capabilities, skills and possibilities. Specific services are customised to the needs of people from various target groups. In the course of past years it became clear that some parts of the programmes in particular projects are blending.
The framework of the services we offer comprises help for people on Christian principles, by which we mean help for people in need, as it is formulated in chapter 25 of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Our goal is to help people keep their human dignity and life in a natural ambience and environment. In cases when our clients suffer from solitude and loneliness, poverty or social exclusion in their hardest form – homelessness – we help them reestablish their family bonds or create new relationships, so that they are able to be integrated back into the society.
Every client is approached individually, in each of them we try to see a human being, a God´s creature who in all instances deserves keeping their human dignity, although the present situation not always corresponds with it.
Our first and foremost priorities are satisfying our clients´ most essential needs (feeding them, providing clothes, medical aid), followed closely by finding accommodation and jobs for them.
Alimentary assistance, or food aid, has been an integral part of the NADĚJE since its very beginning. It is based on the presupposition that people in need must at first satisfy their basic biological needs to eat. In the beginning we used to distribute food to refugees. In the first years we organised help for abroad as well, namely for Bosnia, Ukraine, Russia, Kasakhstan and Romania. In 1997, during the floods, we also participated in providing the alimentary help for people in flooded areas. The NADĚJE also instigated the establishing of food banks in the Czech Republic, and we are still supporting their development.
Our social programmes are also complemented by medical care, especially in accommodation facilities. It is by itself a natural part of the social services for physically or mentally handicapped people as well as for elderly people. In Brno there has been working an internist and geriatric surgery since 1994. Highly important is domestic care and a specialist surgery.
In Prague there is a unique GP surgery for homeless people. The state of health of the homeless is generally much worse than that of most other people. Most frequently they are plagued by dermal diseases, the diseases of upper air passages, but they sometimes also suffer from grave and perilous infectious diseases which can easily be transmitted. Due to their insufficient hygienic habits they can often hardly get some medical treatment in traditional medical facilities, hospitals and clinics.