Društvo Naša djeca Poreč

DND Poreč organizes activities for children and with children in their free time for over two decades now. Our aim is promotion and protection of children's rights that we practice through a variety of quality programs for children in their spare time. These programs consist of creative and educational activities that fallow the methodology of non-formal learning in fun environment. Our target group consists of children age 5 to 18 and their parents. Our regular program every year consists of workshops for children in the afternoon such as drama group, break dance, little explorers, little scientists, programmers (two age groups), growing and body expression, Children forum, archery. In summer months we organize summer camp for children whose parents cannot spend time with them during summer school holidays because they work, and children would be otherwise deprived of comparative advantages of living on the seaside. The camp is organized in 2 weeks shifts. Each shift has three age groups starting with preschool children, then those that attend first and second grade of elementary school and the older children. In each group there are between 22 and 27 children. There is a group leader for each group that has to be experienced teacher, than a leader’s assistant that must be a student of relevant profile, and at least two volunteers that like to spend time with children and know how to take care of them. We also organize special events for children on different occasions such as carnival, International poetry day, International day of the family, Children's week, December festivities and so on. Approximately thousand children are engaged in our activities per year. The organization depends on the volunteer work since it was founded. We have between 60 and 100 volunteers per year who contribute with more than 1500 working hours. One of the volunteers is a certified facilitator of our Children forum, and the other one is an archery trainer. Other volunteers fill different positions: help in organizing public events for and with children, help in camp preparations, volunteers that help manage groups of children in camp, volunteers that conduct one-hour creative or fun/sport workshops for children in camp etc. It has been three years now that the Town Poreč recognizes the importance of volunteering and every year we have 10 of our most dedicated volunteers on annual ceremony. DND Poreč received a town reward Nagrada "30. april" for its contribution to the protection and promotion of children rights. Town Poreč supports financially three of our main programs: Quality spare time, Summer camp and Children forum. We are now two employed full time and one part time. One of the full time employees is a trained volunteer manager. Through our work we promote tolerance, friendship, solidarity, nature preservation and high ecological standards, respect of each person's abilities and skills, support to each other. We engage parents in different activities: on a Family day we organize picnic for kids, parents and grandparents where they play fun games together, parents come as volunteers to help prepare the last day of each shift in a camp and we have a Club for parents of teenagers which has proved to be a great success.