{"id":5844,"date":"2026-09-17T15:46:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/?p=5844"},"modified":"2026-09-17T15:46:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:46:20","slug":"caritas-a-place-of-kindness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/caritas-a-place-of-kindness\/","title":{"rendered":"Caritas: a place of kindness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What does it look like when an organisation listens to the needs of persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, sets up the social services they need, helps people develop the skills needed to enter the labour market, and then opens social enterprises that employ its own service users? The answer to such a complex question fits into a single word: Caritas. Caritas \u0160abac is a civil society organisation with a long tradition, in existence for 22 years. Its work includes humanitarian aid, emergency response, social protection and social entrepreneurship to support vulnerable groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘One of our organisation’s first activities was the Listening Centre. It was designed as a base that anyone in need of support could turn to. People with disabilities came, but also people who needed a daily meal or clothing, health care, social assistance and other help,’ began Sne\u017eana Lozanovi\u0107 of Caritas, explaining that this was how the first records were built up of people and families needing support to live with greater dignity, and that listening to people was the best guide to the direction Caritas should take and the services it should provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much an organisation of this kind was needed in \u0160abac is best illustrated by the figures. Caritas has provided some form of humanitarian assistance to around 3,500 families, or 10,000 individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Alongside that humanitarian work, we also began supporting people in emergencies. We showed we could act quickly and effectively during the floods of 2014 and, of course, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not one of our services was interrupted,’ Sne\u017eana noted with pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In parallel with this work, Caritas extended its activities into social services, such as home care in the municipality of \u0160abac. The service was soon established in other local authority areas as well: Bogati\u0107, Vladimirci, Koceljeva and Mali Zvornik.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Home care is a service we provide to persons with disabilities, to older people, to people recovering from surgery, and indeed to anyone who cannot live independently and manage basic daily activities. More than 60 of our carers support them, and to date as many as 2,000 people have used the service,’ Sne\u017eana said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015 the organisation also established a day care service for adults with mental health conditions and intellectual disabilities, the first service of its kind in Serbia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘By 2018 we had launched the same service in Bogati\u0107, alongside supported living. So we are, in a way, pioneers in establishing this service for adults with mental health conditions and intellectual disabilities. We took the model of work itself from our Italian partners,’ Sne\u017eana added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caritas is particularly proud, however, of its work preparing persons with disabilities to enter employment, with the aim of enabling them to live as independently as possible within their families, and in some cases entirely independently. This led to the launch of a social enterprise providing dry cleaning, laundry, drying and ironing services to people unable to manage these tasks themselves. Soon after establishing it, Caritas founded a second social enterprise in agriculture and tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Both enterprises are registered as enterprises for the vocational rehabilitation and employment of persons with disabilities. And that is where the story comes full circle. We started from the Listening Centre, where we listened to people’s needs; later we developed home care, day care and supported living; and finally we set up two social enterprises so that the people we support could work, according to their abilities, and live from their own work,’ Sne\u017eana explained, adding that the first of them have already gained enough skills to work and live fairly independently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Socijalna sinergija enterprise in \u0160abac currently has 18 employees, 11 of them persons with disabilities, while Avlija odr\u017eivog razvoja in Bogati\u0107 employs 11 people, six of them persons with disabilities. Sne\u017eana stresses that persons with disabilities can and should also be employed on the open labour market, but that the difference is that in enterprises such as those run by Caritas, professional support continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘I work at Avlija as a workplace integration adviser. We adapt the job to the person with a disability, we follow their progress and support their integration at work. We also build a sense of closeness and help colleagues without disabilities to accept them. That has proved good practice,’ Sne\u017eana said, explaining that they have had cases of employing people with disabilities from the day care centre in the open labour market, but that those people quickly returned from the National Employment Service to the day centres.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caritas’ social enterprise Avlija odr\u017eivog razvoja in Bogati\u0107 is, as they put it, more than a restaurant. Anyone who comes here will find not only calm and irresistible aromas and flavours, but will also be supporting people for whom this is a second home, the place where they began a new life. Fruit and vegetables are grown and processed on the estate and later used to prepare meals, juices, jams and the now well-known rakija.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Our day begins with the support we give to people with disabilities. We check whether they have come to work in good spirits, whether there is a problem to be solved. People come first, and then we start work. Honestly, a great deal depends on the team and the atmosphere in any enterprise, and especially in ours. All our staff know their duties: when to come to work, when to leave, when the breaks are, what has to be done and how. They are responsible people,’ Sne\u017eana says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One product now well known on the Serbian market, made at Avlija, is natural homemade rakija, which those who know their rakija say is of excellent quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘We are proud of our distillery, which has existed practically since Caritas was founded. People from the day care centre are involved in the whole production process, above all in labelling and in helping with picking the fruit and preparing the raw material. They also look after the orchards,’ Sne\u017eana explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, both of Caritas’ social enterprises are today entirely self-sustaining, even though their work was project-funded at the outset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Socijalna sinergija already has contracts for laundry and cleaning of business premises with three or four Italian firms, the health centre, the Public Health Institute and a large number of caf\u00e9s and restaurants in \u0160abac. Avlija odr\u017eivog razvoja delivers meals every day to construction firms, to people who cannot prepare food for themselves, and to older people, delivering the meals to their homes. We also have our outdoor restaurants. In good weather people hold meetings, outings, birthdays and celebrations here,’ Sne\u017eana says, adding that all their products can be bought at the shop on the estate or through the website www.avlijabogatic.rs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The staff at Caritas like best to illustrate their work through specific examples and people’s stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘I first met one of the women we support after the Sveta Sofija day care centre opened in \u0160abac in 2015. She arrived in a difficult state, after giving birth, a divorce and the removal of her child, who was placed with the father. She was in the early stages of schizophrenia and depression, with symptoms in remission through medication. Family problems triggered a relapse, and the greatest stress for her was losing her child. The little girl went to live with her father in another town and she was left alone in \u0160abac. On her doctor’s referral she came to our day centre, and after a short time she managed to return to stable remission. We gradually involved her in occupational therapy, and after a year or two she regained her ability to manage everyday life and took a job in the laundry, where she still works today,’ Sne\u017eana recounted, adding that she is especially glad that the woman had her legal capacity restored in 2018, that she is employed on a permanent contract and, most importantly, that she has re-established contact with her daughter, whom she now visits and helps to raise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples like this give the staff further motivation to help fellow residents who need support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘The people we work with see the day centre and the social enterprises as a second home. So do we, the staff. It is more than a job. We very often talk with them about all sorts of personal problems, they ask us for advice, and however professional we keep it, we are also their friends. The atmosphere is like any other workplace. Close relationships develop; we all depend on one another,’ Sne\u017eana says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She admits she has learned a great deal from the people she supports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘They always bring me back to basic human values, to the fact that nothing in life is a given. We often forget that. They teach you quickly that nothing can be taken for granted, because when someone comes to the day centre who does not know how to flush the toilet, does not know how to wash their hands, and you go through that process from the beginning, you realise that things that may be ordinary daily activities for us are not that for everyone. I came to understand what the basic human values are, and how important it is to offer someone a hand when they are going through a difficult time,’ Sne\u017eana says frankly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love, honesty and the wish to help those who need it most are the foundation of this organisation’s work. It is true that the need for care in the community is great, and that there is almost never enough money to establish new and sustainable services. But Caritas withstands every challenge thanks to the people it brings together, who share the same dream: to help, and to leave something good behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was produced under the project Strengthening Cohesion and Resilience in Serbia, supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) office in Serbia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does it look like when an organisation listens to the needs of persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, sets up the social services they need, helps people develop the skills needed to enter the labour market, and then opens social enterprises that employ its own service users?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,161,162],"tags":[],"grupa":[],"intervencija":[],"program":[],"vrsta-sadrzaja":[],"class_list":["post-5844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-social-cohesion","category-social-cohesion-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5845,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5844\/revisions\/5845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5844"},{"taxonomy":"grupa","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/grupa?post=5844"},{"taxonomy":"intervencija","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/intervencija?post=5844"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=5844"},{"taxonomy":"vrsta-sadrzaja","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideje.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vrsta-sadrzaja?post=5844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}