A few students at the University of Ostrava, determined to change the disadvantaged position of Roma children within the education system in the Czech Republic, established the organization S.T.O.P. in 2001. Today, twenty years later, several projects related to children’s education and extracurricular activities are organized here. Such programmes include also volunteering with enthusiastic volunteers that help those in need and attempt to prevent risk-taking behaviours when it comes to children and youths. The vision has not changed over the years. We aim to support, and help disadvantaged individuals, including children and their families, in overcoming the obstacles that may arise for them while trying to achieve what is regularly available for the majority. Two main projects are currently being implemented: ORION and APOLLO. Teaching instructors within the ORION programme teach groups of two to three students to help them work on their weaknesses and troubles they may face at school in maths, Czech language, and English. While ORION is focused on the children of the primary stage elementary school, programme APOLLO is focused on the lower secondary stage elementary school and secondary school students. APOLLO tries to help the students to manage the transition from elementary to secondary school with ease. Physics, geography, German, chemistry, history, and Russian are taught in the APOLLO programme in addition to maths, English and Czech. While the tutors in ORION and APOLLO programmes are employees of our organization, our volunteers visit families when needed. Volunteers implement tutoring for disadvantaged children, children from foster or single-parent families, and children of foreigners. We all follow the values hidden by individual letters in our organization’s name. The name is an acronym made of initial letters of the following words: svoboda, tolerance, osvěta, and podpora. These stand for freedom, tolerance, awareness, and support respectively.
