This year, SmVaK Ostrava will distribute CZK 200,000 within the programme “Plaveme v tom spolu!" that focuses on those employees who care for quality of other people’s lives in places where they live.

Ostrava, February 16 2017 – Severomoravské vodovody a kanalizace Ostrava respects its employees who help the community mostly for free, in their spare time. That is why SmVaK opened, for the second time, the call for grant within this project.

 This grant is available for non-profit organisations where SmVaK employees help. This years, 22 projects were filed. Then total budget is more than CZK 1.7 million and the requested sum was approximately CZK 430,000,

“Finally, we decided to invest CZK 199,500 in order to support nineteen projects. We know that other leading companies in this region have been using similar programmes for several years. We started the project last year only. Now, we have quite an extensive feedback from our employees - we know what they regard as important and what they focus on, when working for the community. We understand now what they consider to be reasonable for improving the quality of life in their environment.

And our employees have learnt a lesson as well – this is clear from the projects that have been evaluated this year by the expert commission. Quality of the projects has increased. I am not talking about the form how proposals are drafted, I am rather talking about the planned activities.  What I really appreciate is that the employees filed more projects where the objective is to help those people who might be at risk because of a disaster or to those whose fate has been hard," says Anatol Pšenička, Managing Director of SmVaK Ostrava.

For instance, this year the financial support will be provided for a special care school in Nový Jičín (equipment of multi-sensoric rooms for children suffering from several handicaps), for field intervention teams (preparation for emergencies), for equipment of dog handlers in rescue teams and for a fund-raising event organised for a girl suffering from cerebral palsy.

This year, leisure-time activities for children will be supported again: the Filadelfia youth club, the Pathfinder club and sports activities such as fire sport, football, aerobic or badminton.
Attention is also paid to environment. For instance, an interesting project will be carried out by Matice Slezská in the surroundings of Hradec nad Moravicí where it is plan to clean and renew small water wells.

 “It does not matter if people work in a sports club, hobby team, in a community club or in culture, if they help organising events for the community, children or groups of people with social or health handicaps".  What is important for us is that they want to help improving the region where they live. This means, it is important for us to have the employees motivated to work at best  - only then the customers will be happy with our services. And we should be able to welcome their activities for the community", says Pšenička.

 “Plaveme v tom spolu!” in 2016

• Almost CZK 200,000 were invested in order to support 15 projects. CZK 355,000 were required by the applicants.
• The total budget of the supported projects was CZK 1.1 million.
• Projects with a very wide focus were supported.
• The aid was targeted at the handicapped, cultural events, environment protection, events for children, sport clubs and volunteer firefighers.

Kontakt:

Mgr. Marek Síbrt, mluvčí

Severomoravské vodovody a kanalizace Ostrava a.s.

28. října 1235/169, Mariánské Hory, 709 00 Ostrava.

tel. 725 500 509

e-mail marek.sibrt@smvak.cz
www.smvak.cz