Our focus is on providing the children with outdoors and sports-related experiences that improve their quality of life and also help integrate them better into society. The organization’s other goal is to promote and popularize charity running as an efficient, transparent fundraising model for Hungary and Eastern Europe, where it is still virtually unknown.

The Trust’s Team Heart initiative focuses on this side of the organizatino’s mission. Seedling Trust consists of two founders, four Trustees, a three-member Supervisory Board and one part-time staffer. Co-founder Andrea Snow was recently named as an Olympic Torchbearer for the Summer Olympics in London in recognition of her outstanding achievements with the Trust.

Seedling Trust’s most significant achievements to date

• The purchase at the end of 2011 of a specially-equipped bus for the home’s residents to permit them to take frequent, regular excursions to the zoo, parks, swimming pools, exercise classes and other events.

• Cumulative funds raised of more than EUR 70,000 by the end of the first quarter of 2012. These funds were raised through charity running events.

• Significant public and media response to our innovative mission and events. This includes a pioneering running event in February in which any runner could register online the kilometers they ran that day, with a major construction company sponsoring the final cumulative kilometer count at EUR 20,000.

• An active network of partner companies and organizations donating time, expertise and facilities on a weekly basis to help achieve our goals. This includes: a local restaurant that organizes a Christmas gift exchange; a bilingual school that organizes joint outdoor and cultural events with its students; and a children’s fitness company, a local swimming pool and a major gym that provide space and training skills.

Measured benefits and outcomes for the children as a result of Seedling Trust’s work, first quarter of 2012

Since we donated the bus to the children’s home in November 2011 it has been used several times a week for a variety of activities that were not possible before. Between January and the end of March, the childrens’ homes took a total of 12 excursions with the bus, including for horseback riding, swimming, park excursions, the zoo, and the gym. Owing to the partnership network the Trust has recently built, these events are now more frequent, with at least two events or more per week.

Dr. Magda Dobó, the institutions’ director and resident pediatrician, issued the following assessment of the impact that the bus and the partnerships have had on the homes’ residents:

"When the children make regular trips and get out of the home for various programs, which significantly contributes to broadening their range of interests. It gets them more accustomed to being in new environments and around new people, and it also gets people in the community accustomed to seeing them. With regards the swimming and the exercise classes: it helps them relax and stretch stiff muscles.

The gym classes employ very specialized, targeted movements that get them to use muscles that they hardly ever use otherwise. Doing these together in a group is also a positive thing for them. As a result of the swim classes we’ve seen improvements in their circulation and muscle flexibility. In the water it’s much easier for them to move and they are capable of many motions that would otherwise not be possible for them.

From the social standpoint, these experiences are important because each child is accompanied by one adult minder. This one-on-one situation makes it possible for them to have attention and interaction on a level that is not possible in the group conditions in the homes.

Thanks to Team Heart and the Seedling Fundation the children become much happier."

Source: Seedling Trust