Charity dinner at Hotel „Intercontinental“

The Humanitarian Organization „Nezaboravak“ organized a charity dinner at Hotel „Intercontinental“, Belgrade on 27 September, 2007, where it gathered around 20,000 euro of humanitarian help. Vladimir Marković, the president of the Humane Society Nezaboravak addressed the large number of guest by the following words:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Excellencies and friends,

Our whole life is made of the perpetual game between heaven and earth, light and darkness, good and evil, life and death.

Your presence and our desire to help are like a light. If we live under the principles of light and faith, then I believe we are doing a good deed tonight. The miracle of a human life is based on these two principles.

These metaphysical secrets are unfathomable for the everyday life of today’s modern age, the world where everything is weighed by wealth and money.

It is the fact that our country is undergoing the transition on all levels and in all areas. It is also widely known that the recovery and growth of our economy are prerequisites that will enable strong social policies and assure the lower minimum income for all their citizens. However, even while the state is being developed, we strive to catch up the developed countries, solidarity and sympathy with those who are in the worst problems cannot be left behind, even for a second, no matter the circumstances. Let everyone ask oneself what is the purpose of material prosperity if not to make us better people, and what is the purpose of our time race and personal achievements if we lose the people around us, and in the end ourselves?

Many people dedicate and predetermine their lives to material values. That is the measure of today’s world, but from the distant past there were people in Serbia who were humane, who helped the unfortunate, sick and distressed people. They shared what they had with them, especially with the poor and sick.

There has always been humanity and sincere humanist in our country and in the world.

Serbian champions of their time continued to nurture this social and cultural tradition of the Serbian society, and they do it today.

In fear, they offered faith, in blackness hope. People of good will have helped and still do so to those who are disabled, those who are chained to the bed by the hand of destiny. There is an old saying “A healthy man is a successful man” and we are here tonight to help the parents and their children, children who are disabled. In our humble opinion, they desperately need help, help from the government and the individuals. Our initiative is the amendment of the Social Security Law in order to make the lives of these children and their parents easier, to bring the faith in their lives and convey the message that they are not forgotten.

Let us not forget, they are children and they are humans too.

The disabled children and their parents have the right to a prettier and easier life, a more secure life. These parents have lots of issues, whether they will have to work after some time and who are they going to leave their children to look after them when they do not have money to pay for the nurses, if these children’s grandparents are so old that they cannot take care of themselves, and their pensions are so little that they hardly cover the cost of their own life. These children are often left alone, unfortunately for their parents and the community. Can we imagine the internal life of a child, naturally vulnerable, born with the uncontrollable desire to walk, to be safe, to explore, confirm and unsuspecting of the environment when it finds out that he or she is not like the other children and that he or she will never be like them. His or her need for love and attention from the parents is significantly increased and the suffering is tremendous if he or she loses this only person he can rely on in this extremely hard life.

Unfortunately for these parents, their struggle with the consequences of the illness that lasts 24 hours a day is extremely complicated by the constant threat whether or not they would be able to provide the necessities for their children. It is a constant struggle for a day, extremely hard and uncertain, especially with the single parent families. Extraordinary strength that springs from the love and faith in life among these single parents is surely not adequate. If there is not the second parent who can support his family with the minimum of necessities for the child or the family, then these mothers are faced with a terrible dilemma. One choice means survival, on condition that there is work at all, letting the child go into the specialized institutions, and the other means staying with the child, but with the tremendous financial problems.

The initiative of the Humanitarian Organization „Nezaboravak“ desires to help them, ease their pain and suffering to provide bare necessities of life and the most important things – parent love and attention. Serbia cannot be so poor not to offer a more up-to-date and humane response to these absolutely hardest life situations of single parents with severely disabled children.

We stand up for the minimum of social security, parent love and attention for single parents of the disabled children. Our initiative is that they always be with their sons and daughters.

With your help tonight, Nezaboravak gives real contibution to the initiative for the amendments to the Social Security Law. With our joint donation tonight we can slightly improve the financial position of the disabled children’s parents, and to remind you that solidarity with the distressed and disabled from any category will remain the everlasting imperative of the Humanitarian Organization „Nezaboravak“.

Do not forget that we live together.

Do not forget those who need help.

Thank you for being here with us on this charity dinner.

The actress Bojana Stefanović read a letter from a mother of the disabled child:

My name is R.Lj. I am 51 years old and I was born in Belgrade. I have been a widow since four years ago. I stayed in my brother-in-law’s flat who has a wife and a fourteen-year-old son. I have two sons. My older son is 28 and younger 21. My older son A is a healthy, normal young man. He finished Air Transportation Technical School. My younger son G has been ill since he was two years old. He has got a severe mental retardation, epilepsy, he does not speak and he does not walk independently. In fact, he is completely dependent from the others, because he cannot eat alone; he neither drinks water nor go into the bathroom independently.

I will try to describe my life in short, and without exaggerating I can say that it is a life in hell, with a severely ill child.

Since the moment I married, I have lived with my brother-in-law and my father-in-law together in the same flat, because my husband and I did not have a place to stay. My father-in-law was an invalid without one leg, which he lost in a road accident. Later, because of gangrene, his other leg was amputated too, and after a while he died.

I am writing to you about this in order to realize my life in the house. I do not have a normal life; I do not go out or socialize with my friends. The life of my older son was under constant stress. He could not stay unconcerned when his brother had heavy and constant epileptic shocks, how he sinks mentally and physically every day. He could never invite his friends from school to his birthday, because G would be usually irritated, because he had not been accustomed to any noise or visit of several unknown people. I mentioned before that we live in one small room and have one small dining room.

I know that there are many people with difficult lives, and every person carries his sorrow. We, parents of these children are left to ourselves, and we come across a number of obstacles in life. In order to do something, we must go out, and how can we do this and leave our children alone? If there is someone who would look after him for a while, I always do things in a terrible hurry. Even going to the health centre to get the prescriptions for his medicines is sometimes a huge problem for me because of the long queuing. Everything is on me now, and I do not wish to burden the others with this too much, even though everybody loves G and wish to help as they can. He has plenty of love and attention from us. However, I constantly wonder especially when I go to bed and when I stay alone with my thoughts and when I say to myself “It’s all right, we made it through the day!” I wonder what will happen in the future, some day when I will not be able to struggle with his illness. Is my older son going to sacrifice his life consciously, his marriage, his children, because of the sick brother who has been forgotten by everybody? No one feels this pain in the soul, this suffering, this inability, this resentment towards this country, which does not have any idea about the conditions in which some of us live. It is easy to live when you are healthy, and it is hard when you are ill and in addition to everyone look at you as some burden. I wish to sleep over one night, after countless sleepless nights and to hear in the morning that some good, humane people did something concerning this, because many people will be easier to live their hard and painful lives.

I have recently found out about some institution which can possibly admit G, but there is a huge, insolvable obstacle between them and me. That is the price of 900 euro, which we, neither I nor my son cannot pay.

What the society offers for severe patients, meaning some accommodation, is not worthy of a human being. I know that I must carry this hard burden on my shoulders for the rest of my life, but it would be a lot easier if knew that there is a light of hope for my G and likewise for my older son, who is supposed to have brighter future, to work and not to sit and worry because he does not have a place to accommodate his ill brother some day when I am gone.