Give a real gift this Christmas: Jan Mrkvička on global work of People in Need and annual Skutečný Dárek scheme
People in Need (Člověk v tísni) is a Czech charitable organisation with an impressively global reach. Founded in the early 1990s in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, the non-profit, non-governmental organisation seeks to provide humanitarian support and foster human rights across forty countries, as well as within Czechia itself. Danny Bate sat down with Jan Mrkvička, the director of its Relief and Development Department, to talk about his career, the ongoing projects of People in Need, and the annual Christmas scheme that helps people to give a ‘real gift’.
This is a massive organization in the Czech Republic, but for those people listening who may not be familiar with this organisation, Člověk v Tísni or People in Need (PIN), what does it do? Who are the people, and which needs does it attempt to solve?
“The scope of our work is really huge. We work in twenty-five countries around the globe. As for the people in need, our partners and our beneficiaries, it really varies.
“We work in more stable countries, where we are supporting people in adapting to climate change, for example. This could be a country like Nepal. I just returned a few days back from a short visit to my colleagues there. We work in Ukraine, Syria, Zambia. So, you can imagine that the level of need and the problems varies a lot. But in general, our mission is to support people who want to change something in their lives, to improve, to solve some problems, and who are lacking the resources. Our vision is not to design a better life for all the people around the world, but rather to support them in their efforts.”
And you have teams, people who are based in these particular countries, there on the ground. What are some countries where there are large teams from the organisation in place at the moment?
“Yes, this is how we work in all the countries. We have stable teams there, working there on a long-term basis. This is the majority of our staff, and we have two and a half thousand people in total. Ninety-five percent of those people are local people who are there with us for years trying to support their communities. The big ones, probably the biggest in terms of people, are in Ukraine and Syria. There could also be small ones with just few a people in one office.
“In some countries, we work mostly together with local organisations. So, we just manage the funds and design the programmes with the partners, but then the implementation is on the side of the partner organisation. So, in that case, we have fewer PIN staff and more partnerships. So, it really varies a lot, the modalities how we work.”
And, for one example, you have a team currently in Syria. How are they helping on the ground in Syria? And how do they hope to be helping as the current situation unfolds?
“We have teams in northeast and northwest Syria, these areas close to the borders with Iraq and on the other side with Turkey. So, you can imagine that now we are following the situation very closely. Some teams are evacuating, some teams are thinking of expansion.
“And what do we do? We are supporting primary education, supporting schools, supporting some bakeries, providing food for the poorest people. But since the civil war, the Iraqi war, has been taking place for many years, we have been trying not only to provide humanitarian aid, but as well to support long-term solutions and local organisations. So, we are supporting small businesses, for example, and agriculture.
“Some people, when they see the map and how it is labelled ‘war’, they imagine that there is constant fighting, which is not the case. People are trying to live their lives. They are just limited by many factors caused by this war. We are trying to support sustainable solutions, as much as is possible in the context where we work. So, you can support agriculture, the introduction of climate-resilient species, or different types of yield. But you cannot work on the value chains, because the country is closed.”
I think people listening will be delighted to hear about such an impressive organization, an impressive Czech organization with such a global presence. What then are the origins of People in Need? When did the organisation begin? And who were the movers and shakers in setting it up?
“The first efforts to help people were happening even before the Velvet Revolution, but the revolution in 1989 was the moment when our ‘founding fathers’ realised that now we live in a free society, and what others were doing for us living under the oppression of the communist regime, we can pay it back. With freedom, we have responsibility as well, and we can start helping others.
“This is the story of a journalist, a war reporter. In a single moment he decided that it's not enough for him just to bring his witness from those regions, but also to bring something to the people who are affected by earthquakes or wars. So he contacted our current CEO, Šimon Pánek, who was one of the student leaders of the Velvet Revolution. They started to figure out how to organise the first convoys with aid. So, this was the beginning. It was a lot of improvisation.
“I joined a bit later – I’ve been with PIN twenty-four or five years – so I still remember those times when 95% of everything was improvisation, trying to figure out what can be done. Since then we have grown up into quite a big organisation. We are still modest, because we work together with the way bigger organizations like Save the Children, Médecins Sans Frontières, Action Contre La Faim, and so on. This sector is full of giants.
“We are still a small-to-medium-sized organisation, trying to keep the spirit of small organisation, trying to be flexible while having an impact. This is the core thing. Quite often these big organisations tend to grow up into complicated bureaucratic apparatuses. It can become about reporting, administration, and not that much real impact. So we are trying to keep the spirit, but it's not that easy, having two and a half thousand team members. Our annual turnover is now 200 million euros, so you can imagine that financial management is still an important part of the job.”
In your own career, a country that you have worked closely with is Afghanistan. This is a long-term relationship, and I believe that you have now published your diaries from the first mission of PIN to Afghanistan. So when did that relationship begin with Afghanistan? And are you still active in this country following the Taliban's return to power?
“We say in the sector that the first mission, the first country program where we are deployed always stays with you. So in my case, it was Afghanistan.
“I was already working for PIN, but in the One World Film Festival. After two years working there, I was ‘released’, and got an opportunity to go to Afghanistan, which was in 2002, very fresh after the fall of the Taliban. At that time, we believed it would be the final fall of the Taliban, but that didn't happen. I published a book all about that last year, so you can still buy it. The name of the book is Země ‘earth’.
“Remembering these old-school times, many things have changed drastically in the sector and at PIN. It was, as I was saying, very improvised and not organised, but we were a good group of people trying to achieve something. I think we achieved a lot. So yes, great, great old times.
“We have stayed; we are still there as PIN in Afghanistan, trying to navigate through changing environments, trying to navigate how we can still support people now. We are focusing more on women and the most excluded parts of the society, but also simply poverty. It's increasing drastically. So yes, we decided to stay, to negotiate with the Taliban. Our story for them – and it's a true story – is that we are there for the people. As long as they want to support their people, and they have a certain interest to let us work there, this is the basis for establishing a relationship with them. So, we are still there, but it is true is that some of the restrictions, mainly restrictions targeting women and girls, and the fact that girls cannot access higher education, make a lot of ethical dilemmas for us.”
If people reading would like to contribute to this work, they can! You rely on donations from all sorts of quarters of society. Specifically at this time of year, we have the return of PIN's flagship Christmas programme, Skutečný Dárek (‘Real Gift’). So what is this scheme that comes around each Christmas? And how does it work?
“This project began fifteen years ago. We were trying to figure out how to explain what we do through concrete things. At that time, what was a very successful concept was ‘adoptions’. You could choose your beneficiary and support a child directly. Yet we wanted to avoid the idea of some rich person from the Czech Republic choosing a specific person to help, because we believe this is not the way how to solve systemic problems related to poverty and so on. So, we came with the idea of Skutečný Dárek, which was inspired by our partner organization Concern, based in Ireland.
“So Skutečný Dárek is about buying like a symbolic gift. This could be teaching for school kids, a package that serves as a nutrition or malnutrition treatment, or planting a tree. Then we are transferring those symbolic gifts into real gifts. In the countries where we work, then we are adding this money from people in Czech Republic to the programmes we implement.
“Thanks to this, we can expand or pilot new things. For example, in Zambia, we work on the promotion of bio-gas. These domestic bio-gas plants are quite a miraculous solution. You just feed it with the dung from your animals, and you have a gas for heating, cooking and lighting. We also we work on the production of biochar, again something that serves to mitigate the effects of climate change, but also improves the yield of the farmers. We are making coal from bamboo, which again is environmentally friendly, and by this you mitigate deforestation and erosion. These are innovations, but it could also be some therapeutic treatment, nutrition, or lessons for parents in how to cook nutritious food for their kids from very limited resources.
"So, there’s a range of types of gifts that people can buy, and then we transfer it into something concrete that we can do there on the ground.”
