Jana Pekárková

CZECH REPUBLIC

Klub Mosty, Fokus Praha

Abstract for The CARe Conference workshop: Club Mosty

About us:

Ctibor Lacina and Jana Pekárková are both experts by experience. Ctibor Lacina has been working as a peer worker and manager of the self-help Club Mosty within Fokus Praha since 2008. Jana Pekárková has been working as a peer worker and a deputy manager of Club Mosty since 2013.

About Club Mosty:

Ctibor and Jana will inform you in a workshop about the history, activities and “philosophy” of the self-help, low-threshold, leisure-time Club Mosty [Bridges], which is part of Fokus Praha, a major non-profit organization supporting people with the experience of mental illness in Prague and Central Bohemia. You will also see a practical demonstration of how the people in the club support one another. All the workers – team members – of Club Mosty have their own experience with mental illness and are therefore experts by experience. The team of Mosty entertain primarily people hospitalized in the nearby Mental Hospital of Bohnice (Prague’s main mental hospital) but other people with the experience of mental problems can also take part in the Club's activities. Mental illness experience is the only precondition for admission to Club Mosty programme. There are some regular and irregular activities featured in Club but as Mosty is a leisure-time programme, not a registered social service, all activities featured are voluntary and the guests are not obliged to take part in them. However, the guests are expected to participate in the programme to some extent. Examples of regular activities: Sharing how we feel, what the weekend was like, reading aloud from books, painting. Examples of irregular activities: Visiting Troja Botanical Garden, Zoological Garden, a ride on a boat along the Vltava River. Club Mosty is opened from Monday to Thursday, 1 pm to 5 pm. It was founded in 2002 by a self-help movement Zrcadlo [Mirror], who received a prestigious award from The Foundation of Good Will of Olga Havlova [the first wife of the president Vaclav Havel].