Doing What You Love While Making Others Happy by Viktória Környei, founder of KIKAPCS.
According to studies and examining the so-called Blue Zone areas of the world, a close-knit community surrounding us is one of the most important things to have a great life.
I want to share that this community does not happen to everyone.
Raising a child, who has chronic conditions such as autism, ADHD or Down syndrome, often cause some invisible problems. Many of these families don’t have enough money to spend on leisure activities since the therapy for special needs children are in general very expensive so normally to go for a trip or enjoy quality time together is not an option for these families.
Unfortunately in some families the relationships deteriorate and many families are approaching the periphery of the society, which means they’re not surrounded by a loving and caring close-knit community.
And how do I know this?
Because I am one of the founders and leaders of a Hungarian Charity organization, whose mission is to provide a community and relaxation in hotels for families whose children have these chronic conditions. This charity organization is called KIKAPCS.
The journey of KIKAPCS. started at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, where my co-founder Luca and I became best friends. During our second year of university Luca invited me to join a class, which was called Startup VIP, where we had to come up with a business idea to validate. So we started the concept of KIKAPCS. as part of a university course.
In the beginning our goal was to identify these families’ needs and examine how we could help them the most. We decided that the best way to approach them was with face to face interviews. This allowed us to identify the key problems and challenges they experience every day. We found that many families were facing similar difficulties and we aligned our organizational goals with their needs.
Our teacher encouraged us and our motivation, passion and enthusiasm helped us to put this project into full practice. During our thesis period at the end of 2018 we officially established the charity organization and began operating with 20 families.
Since the start, trust has been an essential ingredient of our activities because Luca and I haven’t got any children or experiences with children with special needs, but the families gave us their trust and joined our community. Without them and their trust we wouldn’t have been able to start our organization.
We have now grown to include 150 families, 30 volunteers, 13 partner hotels, 4 additional employees and we have organized 27 relaxation programs and 24 community building programs.
However, we are just getting started! We have defined our goals and in the near future we’d like to help more families in Hungary, we want to hire more employees, and start our project abroad too.
So what do we do exactly?
We offer monthly social programs of fun activities. Our programs help diminish fears of social discomfort between special needs kids and kids without disabilities or nurture seamless connections of tolerance and understanding. These connections help create a loving and caring community for the families of KIKAPCS.
On the other part we offer relaxing activities in local hotels with the help of the volunteers and special education teachers who spend time playing with KIKAPCS. community kids while the parents are able to enjoy some quality time for themselves.
I can proudly tell that KIKAPCS. is now my full-time job and much more: it is my hobby, my passion and what I’m happy to wake up for every morning.
Our motivation behind the development of KIKAPCS. was to create something that is our own and also something valuable, that is socially responsible and last but not least we want to make someone’s quality of life better and to make someone smile.
Thank you for reading my article! Don’t hesitate to contact me and I am very open to have a chat, online coffee meeting.
