When Lenka Šmerdová was a young soldier, she returned early from her first outing with female colleagues after passers-by shouted insults at them.

 

Humanitarian aid and the European Union are closely intertwined. Although these efforts receive relatively little media coverage, the EU is one of the world’s largest providers of humanitarian assistance.

In 2026, the EU allocated nearly €2 billion to humanitarian aid, directing assistance to more than 100 countries worldwide, from Ukraine and the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.

Hundreds of programmes and projects operate under its umbrella, providing food and healthcare assistance and supporting people displaced by wars and natural disasters.

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA), responsible for international cooperation and development assistance, is also one of the Commission’s largest departments in terms of budget.

But what does this assistance look like in practice, and what can Slovaks who choose to take part in international missions gain from the experience? Experts from different fields discussed these questions during a panel discussion entitled “Where Can Development Volunteering Take Us?”

The discussion took place in Bratislava on 3 September and was organised by the SAVAN platform with support from SAMRS, SlovakAid and the European Commission Representation in Slovakia. It was moderated by Božena Markovič Baluchová, an expert in international development volunteering.

Four Women, Four Stories: “You Have to Accept Life as It Is”

The first of the four panellists, Silvia Kočková, currently works as a corporate social responsibility specialist at dm drogerie markt.

In the past, she spent three months in Uganda as a development volunteer. Most of her time was devoted to children living with HIV. Alongside other volunteers, she helped develop projects and took part in the day-to-day running of a local kindergarten. In their free time, they often did much the same thing: spent time with members of the community and tried to understand their everyday lives.

For Kočková, this proved to be one of the most important lessons. Even before leaving Slovakia, she had tried not to judge other people’s lives against her own ideas of how they should live. Her time in Uganda helped her develop this approach further.

For her, “not judging” does not mean turning a blind eye to problems. It means learning to look at reality without immediately passing judgement or making assumptions — in her words, through “kind eyes”.

She brought this perspective home with her. Today, her work also involves projects supporting Roma communities. When she first visited Luník IX, a Roma neighbourhood in Košice, with a colleague, his reaction was brief: “Sad, isn’t it?” Kočková replied: “That’s reality.” Her experience in Uganda had changed the way she looked at environments that were unfamiliar or different from her own.

The experience taught her something else, too. Before leaving, she had been happy with her life in Slovakia. But after returning from three months abroad, she began to appreciate much more the things she had previously taken for granted.

That is why she believes every young person should have the opportunity to spend several months in a low-income country. Not necessarily to “save” anyone, but to step outside their own world for a while. “It changes your perspective,” she says.

“People Don’t Need Saving. They Need the Opportunity to Help Themselves”

Michaela Pobudová is the chair of Mareena, an organisation that helps foreigners, particularly people from Ukraine, integrate into Slovak society. In the past, she spent three months volunteering in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

Her assignment took several forms. Initially, she taught English to children aged eight to ten, later working with older children and teenagers aged 14 to 18. Most came from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It soon became clear that the local nuns caring for the children also needed help with practical technical skills, such as using Excel. So, alongside their original plans, the volunteers began responding to these more spontaneous requests.

Together with the others, Pobudová also sought to support the local centre so that it could continue developing after their departure.

Her most important personal lesson came when she realised how much she had viewed local people through the lens of someone who had come to “help”. For example, when the nuns sent her a report to review, she automatically assumed there would be plenty of things to correct. When she finally looked at it, she discovered that they did not really need her help at all.

“I realised how much potential there is in people whom you see as people you have come to save,” she says. That was when she understood that these people did not need someone to rescue them. Above all, they needed the opportunity to help themselves.

That is also why Pobudová believes spending several months in a low-income country can hold up a mirror to our own lives — and why every young person should ideally have the opportunity to do so. At home in Slovakia, she says, we often swim in the same “waters” without realising why we see things the way we do.

But when you find yourself in a completely different environment, you suddenly have the chance to look at the world — and yourself — from the outside. That may be one of the most valuable things such an experience can offer: a better understanding of yourself.

Georgia Can Be a Cultural Shock, Too

The third panellist, Jana Kolář Štrichelová, is an expert in global education at the Czech Forum for Development Cooperation (FoRS ČR) and the founder of GLEN Slovakia, which connects young people with development volunteering opportunities.

Years ago, she herself spent several months in Georgia, where she experienced first-hand what it means to find yourself in a completely different cultural environment.

In Georgia, she worked with women who had been forced to leave their homes because of the wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Many had been internally displaced and were trying to find ways to secure a more stable income. Some had previously earned a living by collecting wool, so Štrichelová and her colleagues helped them explore more sustainable livelihoods.

Tourism was also beginning to grow in Georgia at the time, so they worked on tourism-related activities and taught English to local people. But the work itself was not the only challenge.

Štrichelová arrived with information that was already two years out of date. She therefore had to quickly get to grips with a reality that had changed in the meantime.

Even more surprising, however, were the cultural differences. She had expected Georgian society to be similar in many ways to the one she knew in Slovakia.

Instead, she encountered a society that was considerably more conservative and patriarchal at the time. As a woman, she had to recognise that her usual way of communicating and her more assertive behaviour, which felt natural at home, might not work in the same way elsewhere.

“I couldn’t be completely myself there,” she realised. The experience taught her not only to adapt quickly, but also to be more sensitive to cultural context and to her own place within it.

Today, she says, such experiences can offer young people something else that is important: faith in other people.

Following the news, she believes, it is easy to get the impression that the world is full of danger and conflict. But personal experience in another corner of the world can reveal a different side of it — “how much ordinary human kindness there is”. That was one of the most valuable lessons Štrichelová brought back from Georgia.

“Reality Will Never Be Exactly as We Imagine It”

The fourth and final panellist, Katarína Teglassyová, is a corporate social responsibility specialist and manager at the COOP Jednota Foundation. In 2014, however, she swapped Slovakia for Ethiopia for three months, joining a development project in the south-west of the country.

The area was known for its mountain rainforests, which were under threat from deforestation. Working alongside local communities, she helped develop ecotourism, looking for ways people could earn a living without having to cut down the forest.

For Teglassyová, though, the most important part of the experience was not the project itself, but everyday life in a completely different environment. She had to learn to become more independent, take responsibility and respond flexibly to situations that could not be planned in advance. “Life is always quite different from what we imagine,” she says.

She carried this ability to adapt to the unexpected with her into the rest of her life. Her time in Ethiopia showed her that not everything can be prepared for in advance.

Asked why every young person should spend some time in a low-income country, she responds with a question of her own: “Why shouldn’t they?” A stay of several months in such a country can certainly be challenging, but she also describes it as “a very fulfilling experience”.

 

 

Článok vznikol v spolupráci s Heinrich Boll Stiftung. 

Článok bol publikovaný 23.10.2026 na eubrief.sk