Photo: Czech Radio
For the past few years, the Czech Radio Endowment Fund has organised a project called ‘Santa’s Grandchildren’ that turns ordinary people into guardian angels and Christmas fairies, granting the wishes of elderly people in retirement homes. Although many people mistakenly think that it is only a Christmas event, the project actually continues to raise money and bring joy to the elderly all year round, not just at Christmas.
Helena Kocourová was six years old when she met the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Now a venerable woman of 99, she got her wish this year through Santa’s Grandchildren of meeting another Czech president – the current head of state, Petr Pavel. In a visit to Ms. Kocourová’s retirement home in Mníšek pod Brdy that not even the staff knew about beforehand, President Pavel and his wife Eva surprised the nonagenarian in what she described afterwards as the best present she had ever received.
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Author: Anna Fodor