Back Home to Prague

January 20th ~ We are back in Prague!! After a long and emotionally draining day yesterday touring Auschwitz, we got the morning off today. Most of us spent the morning sleeping in and relaxing. A good nights sleep was definitely needed after the long day we had. After sleeping in a little too late, it was time for a quick lunch! We have been here long enough now that we have found our favorite spots to have a quick bite to eat. Paul has become one of my favorites because they have good sandwiches and pastries, which hit the spot perfectly today.

After lunch we met as a class and went to meet with a non-profit organization called People in Need. This organization started out as a group of journalists who were not satisfied in just reporting crises, but wanted to actually send out aid where they could. People in Need is the largest non-government organization in central Europe and their goal is to help people in critical regions of the world and support human rights. We met and heard from four people who  each discussed a different aspect of the organization. We first heard about Humanitarian and Development Aid, which is the area involving speedy intervention to save lives, alleviate suffering, and help disaster victims around the world. They have programs in 21 different countries around the world, with the biggest being in Syria. We then heard about Social Integration Programs, which worked with 7,000 people in 50 towns in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 2018. Of the 7,000 people, 40% were children and youth, and 60% were adults. The last area of People in Need we heard about was Human Rights. The woman we met with about this told us about the different pillars of this area of the program. One is that of support of civil society, which is being able to change difficult situations. Another one is advocacy, which is letting people around the world know about their work. This area as a whole works in 17 countries, specifically countries in the process of switching to democracy. 

Overall I thought it was really interesting to hear about this non-profit/non-government organization helping others around the world because it is so different from what we’ve done so far here in Prague. We have mainly focused on governmental aspects of the country as well as the history here and the Holocaust. This was a much more hopeful topic, which was a nice change of pace. It was also nice to have a quiet chill day : )