Clovek v tisni, o.p.s.

People in Need is a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded in 1992 on ideals of humanism, freedom, equality and solidarity. Globally we have almost 2000 employees, 400 of them are based in Prague at our HQ. We help others in hard life conditions such as war, natural disasters, poverty, neglecting human rights or insufficient educational system. As the organization is big and we have a wide range of activities, we are structured in departments. The Relief and Development Department (RDD) and the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (HRD) are working on projects abroad that receive necessary support from Prague. RDD is mainly working in the areas facing some kind of emergency, like wartime crisis, and in the areas affected by natural disasters, while also focusing on places where it is difficult for people to break out of the vicious circle of poverty without support. Currently we have around 25 missions around the world helping people to recover from war conflicts, poverty, environmental disasters or to help them on longterm basis - we are building educational infrastructure, helping them with agriculture or social inclusion. Another international department - Center for Human Rights and Democracy (HRD) is supporting independent individuals and groups in countries with repressive regimes who are targets of persecution, harassment or arrests because of their opinions or activities. One of our goals is to strengthen civil society in countries that are going through democratic transformation. Yearly, the HRD department provides help (legal aid, psychological counselling, critical medical treatment) to over 600 people, organises over 200 capacity building seminars and trainings as well as dozens of advocacy events. The target audience of most of our projects includes lawyers working with human rights cases, independent journalists and bloggers critical of oppressive regimes and their practices, students and activists involved in the activities of local civil society. Our projects are currently allocated in 12 countries. Our biggest programmes in HRD are East European programme and Latin-American programme. All projects in HRD are strictly confidential because we have to keep people we support safe. We have also other important departments which focus on our country (the Czech Republic). One of them is the Programmes of Social Integration (PSI) – the second biggest department after RDD. PSI has more than 300 experts and field workers, who are in direct contact with our clients from social exclusion environment. Currently, we focus on debt relief and distraint, social inclusion in the Czech Republic, tutoring and mentoring of children from socially excluded families etc. There are a lot of Czech volunteers who teach or mentor children and adolescents involved in the programme. We also have two educational departments – Varianty and One World in Schools. Varianty (in Czech language the meaning is "options") is the department that offers schools an information service and methodological support in the areas of inclusiveness and intercultural education, global development education and active citizenship. It organises courses, workshops, seminars, conferences, meetings of experts, comic drawing competitions for students and so on. One World in Schools provides schools with documentaries and accompanying methodological materials for teaching current topics of the contemporary world and from its recent history. They focus on media education as a priority because it is a heavily discussed topic in our country nowadays. Our main target group are students of the second stage in elementary schools and high schools but we would like to extend this project also to students at the first stage in elementary schools. We have also projects based on our Czechoslovak history. Through documentaries, discussions and workshops with students we support their active citizenship and commitment to our country. Last, but not least, is One World H