Company
The ČOKOLÁDOVÉ DĚTI, o.p.s. public welfare society is based in Prague. What is its objective? We want to help chocolate children, small Afro-Czechs, integrate into the social majority. We will particularly accentuate chocolate children from children’s homes. At the same time, we will patiently, consistently and conscientiously influence the Czech public and strive to help people gain a better understanding of the cultural and ethnic roots of the chocolate children, to accept their differences as interesting and appealing, and moreover, to be able to appreciate their human values without prejudice or looking through their fingers.
We are well aware of the fact that the majority often receives disparity and dissimilarity with mistrust. This tendency is even stronger among children – on one hand is the children’s collective, often verging towards genuine cruelty, and on the other is the sensitivity of a child that feels a definite need to belong somewhere, a need for friendship, support and love. Our aim is to conduct activities that will blunt these edges, and raise tolerance and understanding.
The achievement of this objective is difficult and requires time. Many may even consider it a naïve and Sisyphean task. But we are convinced that we resemble neither Sisyphus nor Don Quixote fighting against the windmills. We believe that visible progress can be achieved through conscientious and consistent effort, enlightenment and organisation of events to support tolerance and cohabitation among people with various roots and skin colours.
The saying goes that he who lights a single torch, lights a thousand. We realise that we must strive for an attainable goal, which is why we chose this particular group of children. Many of us have similar roots, a similar fate; we too were chocolate children. For this reason, we will not attempt to solve the issue of integrating children of Roma ethnicity, children from the Vietnamese minority, or children of immigrants from the East. Instead, we will concentrate exclusively on small Afro-Czechs. If we succeed, others may succeed as well, and the atmosphere in society may change. This is our greatest wish.
Our specific aim is to obtain financial resources from sponsors, patrons and small individual donors, and invest them into the organisation of events which will be directed at fulfilling our objectives.
We will build and operate a secure virtual discussion forum, and organise a diverse range of events such as meetings, seminars, lectures, discussions, happenings, concerts and street parties. We will design and arrange trips, excursions and so on. The merit of our activities will simply be aimed at coexistence, shared experiences based on information and amusement.
Teenagers are a very important group for us, because we see a greater inclination towards tolerance in this age group than among older age categories. Teenagers simply tend to judge people far more according to whether they are fun, cool, trendy, have certain abilities, excel at certain activities and are enthusiastic, rather than whether they are white, yellow, black or even blue.