Behind every list there is a person

Year-round student support

Overnight she became the head of the family. She did not give up her degree.

Katka was a young student with her own plans and ideas about the future. Then her mother died suddenly. Overnight she had to become the head of the family: look after two younger brothers, keep the household running and take over the mortgage payments. There was much less time left for her own dreams.

She did not give up her studies. When we visited Katka six months later, she welcomed us as a fresh graduate. She finished her degree and, alongside it, kept the household going and looked after her brothers.

Her story reminds us that behind every student there is a person, a story, and often circumstances we do not see. Supporting education is not just help with school costs. It is help for a young person to carry on with what they chose for themselves, even when life suddenly complicates the path.

How we support students

Opportunities through education

Seven years with the girls of the Maria Romero College

For the past seven years Darujme úsmev has systematically supported girls from the Maria Romero College in Prešov, who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, mostly from marginalised Roma communities.

The help went to specific needs tied to education and everyday life: tuition costs, travel to school, school supplies, scholarships and other essential expenses. Thanks to this support the girls could continue their education and gain opportunities that would often have been out of reach without financial help.

Behind it stands a long cooperation with the Salesian family and with donors who chose to invest not only in a specific need, but above all in the future of young women.

Invisible Voices

Not a Slovak lesson. A place to speak.

At Miletičova 7, young people from Ukraine who came to Slovakia without their parents meet regularly with young Slovaks and young people from other countries. They choose the topics themselves. After the conversation the evening carries on informally, with games, snacks and talk.

The speaking club is not a Slovak lesson. It is a place to speak, try, make mistakes and slowly gain confidence. And it is where the first friendships in a new country begin.

At a workshop in September 2026 the young people wove bracelets. The hands in a circle became the photo we use everywhere: not because it is pretty, but because it is true.

About the Invisible Voices programme

Darujme úsmev, December 2019

On 18 December they loaded a van and crossed the whole country

On Wednesday 18 December 2019, Róbert Mruk set off with two volunteers, Julo and Luky, on a journey across the whole of Slovakia. FINAL CD lent the van free of charge. They delivered the gifts straight to families in need or to the people who look after them: the FMA sisters and the workers of the Slovak Catholic Charity.

Whatever did not fit in the van went by post, by courier or in other volunteers' cars. Some gifts were delivered by the Past Pupils of Trnava, and the collection also ran in Sabinov and Prešov. That year about 80 families and individuals and 12 centres received gifts, and more than 420 shoeboxes went under children's Christmas trees, twice as many as the year before.

Today about 600 volunteers deliver across Slovakia. The principle has not changed: a specific item for a specific person whom one of us knows.

How Darujme úsmev works