Seven years ago, Jana Galatová had the idea to make 30 seniors happy in a senior home in Senec. She was inspired by the sad sight of lonely seniors in the hospital, where she often visited her sick mother. She created a group on Facebook and tried to invite her friends to join. Silvia Slobodová offered her a helping hand, who was excited by the idea and made a poster and a simple registration system for Janka. Together they named the collection “How much love can you fit in a shoebox?” and unknowingly started a beautiful pre-Christmas tradition for many families. That same year, up to 800 seniors in disbelief unwrapped their beautiful Christmas presents.
Three years later, there were over 70,000 of them. After four years, Janka and Silvia founded a civil society organization so that they could carry out their activities sustainably.
Today, the activities of Koľko Lásky o.z. are far more than just Christmas boxes full of love.
Koľko Lásky o.z. was founded to support the organisation of volunteer-based activities focused on senior citizens. Our goal is to create a tradition of organizing a Christmas gift collection for lonely seniors and to create loving cooperation between schools and facilities for seniors.
The mission of Koľko Lásky o.z. civil society organization is to bring seniors not only joy, but also a feeling that they matter – that their Autumn of Life can be full of love and belonging. Through our nationwide appeals, we strive to improve the lives of seniors who are dependent on the help of others and create bridges between generations.
Behind our association is an amazing team of people - volunteers, coordinators, supporters and fans. Tens of thousands of people participate in our challenges every year, we work with approximately 300 volunteers and 16 volunteer coordinators throughout Slovakia. Thanks to our amazing community of people, we have so far cheered up over 300,000 lonely senior hearts.
We are a cohesive team that helps each other.
Is our main love language.
Are the pillar of trust and long-term relationships.
We are organising our traditional Christmas challenge How Much Love can you Fit in a Shoebox for the seventh time in 2024. During it, the whole of Slovakia is preparing Christmas gifts wrapped in shoeboxes. We have already given away more than 294,000 of them.
Na jar beží naša výzva Láska kvitne v každom veku, v ktorej deti aj dospelí chystajú ručne robené pohľadnice pre seniorov v tematike kvetov, ku ktorým pripájajú sadeničky, semienká a kvety, aby tie im rozkvitli v izbách. Evidujeme takto už 46 800 potešených seniorov.
By donating therapeutic dolls, we help seniors with Alzheimer's and senile dementia train parts of their brains that they haven't used in a long time - this helps them recall beautiful memories and helps them with their mental well-being.
allocated shoeboxes to seniors
postcards sent with love
gifted therapeutic dolls to senior homes
In addition to the general public and our volunteers, we also try to involve children from partner schools and corporate volunteers in our activities. We are very happy with our amazing supportive community and we are constantly trying to build and develop it.
We participate every year in grant calls and subsidies, but unfortunately with a success rate of about 20%, while most grants will provide us with the necessary resources to implement the project, they do not cover our organizational and operating costs. However, we cannot function in the long term without them.
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