Lýsing á stofnuninni/samtökunum

We are a local liberal protestant congregation of Czech Brethren placed in Central Bohemia in an industrial city of Mladá Boleslav (Skoda factory headquarters). The main purpose of our church community is to share the biblical message and to support ourselves, and the society in a Christian spirit. Even if the city has more than 45 000 inhabitants, we meet regularly in the number of 40 persons in our congregation. We prepare regular activities in, for our parish community, and for wider Czech Brethren Church in the Czech Republic, and some regular and random activities in the city of Mladá Boleslav for the wider public in cooperation with other local organisations. The project European Solidarity Corps presents our first attempt of being part of an international European project.
Our community manages several regular and long-term activities focused on Christian life and prepared for members of our parish community among which the Sunday service is central. Every Wednesday there is a biblical meeting with lunch and afternoon coffee for elderly people and a biblical meeting for teenagers. On Fridays, there is a meeting for two groups of children. Every second Thursday in a month a middle generation meets for reading a Bible. Two times a year we organise the garden party for our members and during summer holiday one-week summer camp for kids from six to 12 years. For these activities, we use the parish house, the church and the cottage our congregation has in the Jizerské Mountains.
Within the regional Czech Brethren Protestant Church, the pastor of Mladá Boleslav organizes one spring meeting for families and one autumn trip in the countryside for families. Then, he leads a one-week canoe camp for teenagers during the summer period.
Then there are traditional meetings and events organised by our congregation and are proposed for the public: The Multi-genre festival for kids and families in the park surrounding the church building in the centre of Mladá Boleslav in June. Approximately 250 individuals come. Then we prepare every November so-called Fair Trade Market for the public in cooperation with local primary school and Mental Power Prague Film Festival and Fair Trade Breakfast in May in cooperation with the Town of Mladá Boleslav.
We also try to remember some important days of Czech history, we usually organise a concert of some other event, in the park around the church or in the church itself. Two years ago, we launched the project of the community garden behind our parish house but we were not very successful, this remains as an open project to be accomplished.
In cooperation with other Churches in Mladá Boleslav, we organize once a month public lectures of interesting persons (politicians, philosophers, historians, priests, journalists, writers etc.) within so-called Oecumenical Academy.
In 2017, we founded with young Prague artists so-called St. Havel´s Gallery in the verger´s house and we organise from three to five expositions a year of Prague Academy of Art absolvents there.
Three years ago we started to cooperate with Diakonie ČCE (social services provider) in the project for asylum-seekers and their integration to Czech society. Within the project, there are regular meetings and creative workshops prepared for foreigners installed in Mladá Boleslav, the most often Muslim´s women.
Since spring 2019 we cooperate closely with the NGO Naruby, z.s. that is the local non-governmental and non-profit organisation that runs café bar in the verger´s house next to our church and projects films with ecological and human rights issues.
The scale of our activities is quite large and does not focus only the Christian life and our congregation but tries to involve different people, not only Czechs but also the foreigners and without any official Church membership. For example, as the parish building is located in the centre of Mladá Boleslav, many homeless people come to ask for food or money, we provide them with a food bank in cooperation with other Evangelical local Church. Or, when migrants came in 2015 to Europe, hundreds of them were closed in nearby Centre of Detention. We participated in their support via our Church. In this connection, when the Office of the Government initiated the "Hate Free Zone" platform we decided to join this. The pink sign "Hate Free Zone" shows that our organisation is open, tolerant, democratic and ready to support people in need without prejudices. In addition, our congregation is open to activities of Roma Church that meet regularly in our parish house.
We wish to show the volunteer the wide scope of our activities he/she can make a choice. He/she can participate in the work with different generations and on different places and he/she can try the work of different genre usually in a civic sphere. We are ready to welcome a volunteer for one year and we are open to discuss the period he/she wants to come.