We have been seeking to be a socially responsible company since the very beginning. Alongside our core business activities, we are voluntarily implementing positive public ideas. We believe that being socially responsible means contributing to dealing with public issues – everybody must take responsibility according to their own abilities and possibilities.
We choose to prioritize our input so that at least one home enjoys better health, more warmth or food over pointing a finger at the sorest social problems or gaps left by the State. We support public initiatives such as the Rose Ribbon initiative “Nedelsk!” and the project of the Auxiliary Service of the Order of Malta “Maltiečių sriuba”. You are always welcome to join us!
The activities of the Order of Malta mainly focus on providing assistance to the elderly, especially in the area of food and home visits (human interaction and help with the routine). In 2014, the total amount donated was LTL 616 thousand, which allowed the Order to provide all sorts of care for nearly 2,000 aged people across Lithuania this year.
They usually approach business to help organise an event, with all the proceeds going to the elderly. Speaking of loyal friends that have been lending their support for many years, Mr Kimas mentions companies such as Roche, Tele2, Ars Libri, Kalnapilis, and Senukai. For more, read the article at http://www.veidas.lt/tag/labdara.
Also, believing that the vitality of the soul of every nature rests on its culture, we want to render all kinds of assistance to private initiatives, with entrepreneurs donating their money and time for objects of culture and art that have a lasting value and are important for the history of the nation.
Europos Parkas (the Park of Europe) to us is an example of a contribution by public-minded and responsible, mature business into the intellectual, cultural, and social advancement of Lithuania.
We invite everyone to join in!
Highlights from the function acknowledging the sponsors of the Maltese Soup event (2014).
WE HAVE LAUNCHED A CHARITY AND SUPPORT ORGANISATION!!!
SENELĖS PASAKA (GRANDMA’S FAIRY TALE): what is it, and what is it for? The grandma’s fairy tale is an ingrained part of the childhood for many of us, and just as ingrained in our society are the elderly and retired people who are not always capable of taking care of their daily rounds themselves. Named after the grandma’s fairy tale, Senelės Pasaka is a civil, social-minded initiative geared towards connecting elders who need all sorts of assistance with volunteers that can help them.
FACTS: We can talk numbers, turning retired elderly people into statistics, filtering and interpreting Excel sheets in one way or another.
1. As of 01/01/2019, the basic retirement pension pay-out is €164.59 /Source: www.sodra.lt/
2. As of 01/01/2019, the relief pension pay-out is €132.00. In 2018, the number of people who received relief payments and compensations was 157,500. /Source: Sodra, Statistics, Analysis, and Prognosis Department/
3. As of 01/01/2019, the absolute poverty line is €238.00 /Source: Sodra, Statistics Lithuania/
4. Of the pension-earners who live below the poverty line, 85,000 are people over 80 /Source: http://atvira.sodra.lt/lt-eur/
5. In 2016, of all people who froze to death, 97 died in rural areas, and 15 were over 80. In 2017, of all people who froze to death, 97 died in rural areas, and 11 were over 80. /Source: http://www.hi.lt/lt/paieskos_priemone.html/
BUT the initiative Senelės Pasaka is not the product of numbers, but rather of my own experience of volunteer work going back 17 years – during that time statistics have turned into a harsh reality in which the elderly in our country live day in and day out.
The GOAL is to give the elderly with a possibility to receive the support that they need from responsible, conscious, and good-willed people provided on a voluntary basis across Lithuania; to connect those who need help and those who can give it. By asking people to help, we aim to organize volunteers who could make some time and give their tender attention to the elderly who need it.
What was the origin of the idea behind Senelės Pasaka? Following a close interaction with elderly people, I abandoned my long-brandished idea to establish a home for the elderly – after all, it is help through hard measures, because the society is growing old and we cannot build homes for everyone, and the solution of the problem lies with ideas, not within some walls. I do not want to establish yet another organization in the midst of others, encourage people to ‘come join us, we are better than the rest,’ or anything like that. In my practical work, I have observed that elderly people need more than just institutional assistance. They rest on the shoulders of good-willed people, but these are few and far between; uninformed.
Ergo, my declaration is this:
1. I will not help.
2. Our Senelės Pasaka team will not help.
3. Help will come from an active, empathic, tightly knit community.
And that is why we connect people who can help and those who require assistance. We want to build an organization that would serve as an intermediary between the community, related authorities, and an elderly person with limited physical, financial, and social capacity. An organization that could become a partner to the elderly that, if needed, might serve as a borderline option between an old people’s home and living independently in your own environment – a mobile support group that you can call your home. The format of the support is this: identifying the needs, offering the required measures available (on a national or municipal level), and if such measures are inadequate, organizing assistance from other structural or public funds or own resources.
We aim to become a reference center for coordination that would connect, direct, inform people and promote not pity but a shift in consciousness – by helping others, we are actually helping ourselves, because life is a circle, just like a mythological cycle: spring to winter, youth to old age, and one drives the other, giving life depth, meaning, and completeness.
It is not the organization and growing it that is our final goal, although we hope that the model will work and spread, then again you cannot connect the whole of Lithuania into one organization. We seek to develop a community based not on pity, but on conscious initiative, responsibility, empathy that is aware of the person next to it; an organization with no tolerance for problems and a determination to discuss them, loud voice about problems, one that understands that it is not the norm but a situation that needs resolving, and has the resources and, most importantly, motivation to resolve it. We are looking forward to comments and suggestions because a community and society like that should be founded by all of us.
Let us join a circle of soulmates that care about the situation of the elderly, and take initiative to change it so that everyone’s fairy tale of life has a happy ending!
WE HAVE JOINED FORCES AND AFTER TWO WEEKS, WE HAVE:
- an officially incorporated public organization (Všį), which means that we have made it to this year’s two-percent – 2% – train! Our code in the tax returns system is 305123020
- our website at senelespasaka.lt and a FB page at https://www.facebook.com/senelespasaka/
- a volunteer form at senelespasaka.lt/noriu-tapti-savanoriu/
We believe that the wellbeing of socially vulnerable social groups does not depend on the authorities alone. It calls for a personal contribution and responsibility from us all.
Our goals for the foreseeable future are to:
- Identify the need and scope: we call on people who know about any lonely, abandoned old people who have special needs or face other difficulties to report to us, and those who want to join the Senelės Pasaka circle of soulmates, to fill out the volunteer form.
- Develop an awareness-raising website for us to upload stories of the elderly and to give the volunteers an opportunity to chose and allocate, if necessary, regions where they want to provide assistance, and the type of assistance.
- Become a social partner to the elderly: initiate and expand cooperation among care, social caretaking service providers and governmental bodies, socially responsible businesses, identifying cases that carry social risks and finding the best ways of assistance to address the situation.
- Establish mobile assistance groups to include a social worker, a medic, and members to take care of the household and domestic aspects depending on the needs of every individual.
- Right now, we are looking for the following specialist volunteers in particular: a legal adviser, a PR specialist, a funding application filer/coordinator, a volunteer coordinator/patron.
- We invite people to contribute to our project to ensure its continued existence by becoming a sponsor and introducing yourself as a socially sensitive and responsible company to the public.
- Let us join the circle of soulmates so that everyone’s fairy tale of life has a happy ending!