20/12/2021
Croatia
participants
Main objectives of this event was to help Dom Duga Zagreb, which provides shelter, support, food, and counseling to domestic abuse victims. Christmas is generally considered a holiday that emphasizes the importance of family, and as such, holidays can be extremely traumatic for victims and survivors of domestic abuse. Additionally, the Christmas period often brings with it a reported increase in police callouts for incidents of domestic abuse. Therefore, ESN Zagreb decided we should do all we can to ease their stress this holiday season. The presents bought for the shelters' users ranged from didactic toys for newborns, headphones for teens to cosmetics for women, but all were assembled with love and care, and contained some sweets and holiday cards.
This Christmas, ESN had the opportunity to be Santa Claus. Erasmus Santa Network is a fundraising activity whose main purpose was to buy Christmas presents for women and children in the shelter for domestic abuse victims – Dom Duga Zagreb. The shelter provided us with a list of wishes their users wanted as Christmas gifts, and ESN made those wishes a reality. A Charity Pub Quiz was organized, and all the profits were used to buy said gifts – so Erasmus students contributed to the cause. Following this, a list of gifts that were still available was posted and ESN volunteers signed up for the gifts they’d like to buy. In the end, we managed to collect all the presents and deliver them to the shelter just in time for the holidays. Even though the point of this activity was to make Dom Duga Zagreb’s users happy, it made our volunteers even happier, just by knowing they made someone smile this Christmas.
