SLOVENIA'S 5 CORE VALUES

We can always choose to make warmth, kindness, and sincerity our daily companions, as it is beautiful and respectful relationships, empathy and a smile that enrich us and the people around us. Cooperation, patience and mutual respect are the foundations for tolerant and kind coexistence. Actions based on love and joy inspire hope for a kind and compassionate future, in which there will be no exclusion, but connection.

When I visited my mother-in-law and other elderly residents in a care home, I met Tanja Trebec and Bojana Primc, volunteers who decided to dedicate a few hours a day to the elderly residents in the aforementioned home. Their paths crossed when they visited their mothers, who were residing in the same room as care home residents. Thus began a story of friendship and volunteering.

They noticed that besides care and medical assistance, the elderly especially need someone to listen to them, entertain them, cuddle them, hug them, comfort them, and assure them that they will be there for them through thick and thin. As care homes suffer from a chronic staff shortage, they decided they would help the residents as best they could, primarily by keeping them company every day. 

Those who are bedridden and rarely visited often feel lonely, so it brings them great joy if someone stops by their bedside and says a kind word to them, offers them water, tea or something else, and adjusts the pillow under their head or between their legs, etc. 

During their rounds at home, Tanja and Bojana perform many good deeds with great love, which remains in the memory of the people to whom they show affection, as well as in their own. They say that through these actions, they primarily enrich themselves, grow personally, and strengthen themselves. Consequently, every day they appreciate each moment of life more, as the latter is very unpredictable. 

Tanja was left without her beloved sister overnight, who died of a heart attack at the young age of fifty-two, making her even more aware of how important it is to always be there for one another and offer support. That we are connected through thick and thin. A person who is condemned by life to lie in bed is often in great distress. Although they might not want to be a burden to their family, in a way they are. Many struggle primarily because they are a financial burden to their loved ones. 

Some find it easier to confide their various troubles to them rather than their relatives. They don't have a magic power that would bring them health, but they always have plenty of patience, joy, and warmth in reserve, thanks to which the helpless elderly don't think about their illness for at least some time. I admire their dedication and commitment to a compassionate life, for which they have earned the title among the residents. Angela.

Your true power is not measured by whom you have defeated, but by whom you have helped. A compassionate life is your conscious choice. Empathy is the binding agent of every healthy society. It is up to us to decide what kind of society we want to live in. And it is up to every single one of us!

Jerica Strle