Project environment

Land of Harmony Foundation is located in Žilina - north part of Slovakia - close to Czech and Poland border, with own small airoport direct conection with Prague airoport. Only 200 km from Bratislava - capital of Slovakia - train and buses conection every 2 hours. Surounded by mountains with lot of opportunities for trips - Malá Fatra, castles Streèno, LIetava, rafting on the river Váh. In the town there are lot of grammer schools, Univerzity of Žilina so many young people are in th community. Cultural centrum, cinemas, clubs, sport facilities, swimingpool and many others opportunities to meet other youngsters.
Land of Harmony Foundation has own house, where a community center of inclusion is located - young persons with and without disability can meet, comminucate, make fun, create, make concerts, organize club meetings, develop skills and realize some of their dreams together. They are two club rooms, garden with open air theater, some offices and restaurant. In the house there are also two appartments for independent living opportunities for young persons with disability to develope their everyday skills. Many volunteers without disability from local community participate on the activities.
One programme manager and two supported persons are officialy working in the foundation. Many activities are runnig by volunteers according they interest and skills. Land of Harmony established also Agency for supported services located in the house, where three professionals are working for inclusion of persons with disability into community.
Every day they are some activities organized for mix ability groups - club meetings, PC sklills development, Music instruments, Cooking skills, Painting, Dancing, Theatre performance, Cinema club, traking group, football team, squash players,…. Some weekeds we organize stay in the mountains for three days - they are cooking together, plying games and working on some tpoic - cleaning water source or forest, building iglo, painting colour lives of trees, …
Once per year we organize international festival of creativity and fantasy Jollieworkshop for young persons with and without disability - first one was organized in the year 1990.
During the summer we prepare " Summer dialogues " or some other camps where youngsters with and without disability are living together enjoing atmosphere of the holidays.
Every year we participate on some youth exchanges, where also mix ability groups are involved.
On the end of the year we organize "Celebration of the light" meeting of all volunteers, sponzors, friends and we have special award of Forrrest Gump for best volunteer, person with disability making the biggest progress and for the best sponzor. Another award of Tracy Tiger is for creative yonug person in the region.
According the ideas of young people many time we support their own ideas - photoatelier with exibition, castles visits, rafting on the wild rivers,

Motivation and EVS experience

We are HO for ST EVS from the year 2002 and we have been hosted 13 volunteers with intellectual disability and one volunteer fro LT EVS. We had good experiences with the volunteers and SO. We would like to provide further opportunity for volunteers with fewer opportunities to participate in our project and increase their skills in our activities.
We are also working with mix ability groups, so we think this is a great opportunity for some young persons with disability or fewer opportunities to spend the time in some other county, to meet other youngsters, to communicate with other language and develop some new skills and self-esteem.

Description of the organisation

Main goal of Land of Harmony foundation is integration of persons with disability into community life in different areas - education, work, living condition - mostly leisure time activities. We organize regulary club meetings for young people with and without disabilities, we offer them PC training, english lessons, cooking, ceramic, sports, theatre, music, ... Every year we organize weekends in the mountain with specific programme - Living as Eskimos, Skiing in the hills, .... For 20 years we organize international festival of creativity and fantasy Jollieworkshop. We have one regular project manager, 2 part time workers and about 20 volunteers supporting the organization.