Cycling St. Jacob's Way for The Swallow

Michal Dobíšek

I got an opportunity to take a 3 month long sabbatical from work. I decided that such a long free time should be used for something extraordinary, something that is not possible with a normal work routine.

I need to clear my mind, I would like to try some long distance cycling and for a long time I have been interested in St. Jacob’s Way (the pilgrims' way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain). A natural combination of these three things is to cycle from Prague to Santiago (~3000 km, 1850 miles). To give the whole enterprise some purpose, I have decided to use my journey to support the expansion of The Swallow Day Centre which provides care for children and young people with various disabilities.

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The Swallow Day Center today

Hodonín is a town of 30 thousand people in the wine-growing region of Southern Moravia, near the borders with Slovakia and Austria. In Hodonín in 1997 two mothers on maternity leave decided to start a mother’s club. By now the original club has evolved into a large Center for Family and Social Services Hodonín, which covers everything from children to elderly people. The Swallow Day Centre is one of their activities: Taking care of children with disabilities does not mean isolation for the child or the parent. Similar to how a swallow returns to its nest, the child returns home every afternoon after an active day spent with friends. We support the family, which helps with the care for the disabled child.

Everyone who has experienced enforced working from home or home-schooling during lockdown can imagine the importance of spending the day away from home. Currently the Swallow Day Centre has capacity for 13 places and is able to help people up to the age of 26. The goal of the extension project I am supporting is to extend the capacity to 30 people up to the age of 35. The project has received grants from the EU and Czech government which cover 85% of the planned cost. The remaining 15% has to be funded from other sources. Due to the current sharp rise of building materials in Czechia, it’s already clear the cost will be higher than expected. The target of my campaign is to raise 8,000,000 CZK (~£270,000) which approximately matches the remaining required amount.

My plan to cycle 3000 km to Santiago seems quite crazy and away from “normal” life. The people from Hodonin’s Center engage in such crazy endeavours (like building the new Day Center worth millions of pounds) as part of their everyday work, simply trying to make the world a better place. I hugely admire that. I don’t really expect that my little trip will raise almost £300k. However I want to have that number in sight, since that is the challenge faced by the real heroes. I have changed the target amount to 75000 Kč (~3000 €, so that 1 € ~ 1 km), so that every donation could show some progress.

I am starting my journey on September 2nd, once my children return to school. I have deadline of October 11th when I need to return to work. During that time I need to get to Santiago and back.

I will post updates on my FB https://www.facebook.com/michal.dobisek/ and I would appreciate it if you would support me by supporting the Hodonin’s Center project.