Prague, Aug 8 (CTK) – Students of Prague secondary schools will learn about the stories of homeless people through a publication The Street Is Not My Choice prepared by the Prague Social Services Centre (CSSP), the Prague City Hall has said, adding that 1000 copies have been distributed to schools.
The publication will be used in the school subjects Man and Society and Man and the World of Labour.
It tells the authentic stories of dozens of homeless people and how difficult it is to return to common life from the street.
The stories were written by workers of the centre in cooperation with its clients.
“I believe that the complex life stories which stripped their protagonists of housing and they ended up on the street through no fault of their own will make the students think about the issue of homelessness and perhaps reassess their attitude to it,” city social affairs councillor Daniel Hodek said.
According to an analysis the City Hall has had worked out, about 4000 to 5000 homeless people, four fifths of them being men, live in Prague with a population of over one million. One tenth of them are foreigners, most often Slovaks.
Six daily centres offer services to the homeless people in Prague. They are run by NGOs and they offer meals, clothing and consultancy.
The CSSP offers meals on the Hermes ship anchored on the Vltava River and in cooperation with NGOs, it prepares four more points where the homeless will get food.
The centre also applies the From the Street to a Flat programme and offers street work. It runs a dosshouse on Hermes, an asylum house and 18 emergency flats.
