In 2013, we opened a unique family centre in Slovenia, located in Ljubljana and designed as a mini city with a street, café, pond, maze, multipurpose room for lectures and events, city park with a tower, and a library under the sky. Children of different ages are provided with a lot of entertainment as well as options to discover Ljubljana and its attractions. It also features a worldwide first – a sustainably designed vertical garden with a green wall. It already has 29,000 visitors per year.

Financial aid for children and adolescents

We provide financial help in the form of a partial coverage of the costs at the beginning of a new school year for children in primary and secondary schools (10,594 aids), summer school cost coverage, summer/winter holidays for primary school children (10,140 aids), children’s lunch cost coverage for children in primary and secondary schools where meals are provided (123 aids), and financial help at childbirth (1,572 aids).

Multiculturality

Ljubljana’s kindergartens and primary schools are attended by children from different countries and cultural as well as language backgrounds. Livada Primary School is attended by more than 300 children from more than 30 different countries and is an excellent example of a school for different nationalities since innovative teaching ways and also many support mechanisms for a successful inclusion of children of immigrants in our society have been developed.

Youth research activities

The main objectives of youth research activities are the inclusion of as many participants as possible and a high quality of research assignments, with which our researchers attend national and international meetings where they achieve exceptional results. The biggest annual meeting is “Let’s trust in our own creativity”, which is attended by approximately 500 talented young researchers from Ljubljana’s primary and secondary schools.

Seven holiday homes for children

In Slovenia and Croatia, there are 7 holiday homes for children owned by City of Ljubljana, used during summer and winter holidays for pre-school children, primary school children and socially disadvantaged children. Holiday homes are managed by the Slovenian Association of Friends of Youth Ljubljana Moste-Polje and Vič-Rudnik as well as the Organization for Holiday and Recreation Programmes for Children (ZLRO). 

Lifelong learning

Cene Štupar Institute – Ljubljana Public Education Centre is the largest centre for lifelong learning in Slovenia, attracting more than 9,500 participants every year. A wide range of educational and training programmes allows everyone to find something for themselves, from primary and secondary school programmes, different vocational trainings, lifelong learning programmes to foreign language courses and various study groups as well workshops. Among the newer ones are “Startup – Entrepreneurship Weekends”, where everyone looking for information about entrepreneurship can improve their know-how. They follow the vision to become the key educational organisation for the development and implementation of programmes for the needs of the economy and intercultural as well as intergenerational connectivity.

Activities in the Cene Štupar Institute, photo Archive of Cene Štupar Institute

We co-finance the programmes and projects of NGOs and institutions

Since 2010, we have been co-financing enrichment activities in kindergartens that have become a sign of top quality and are a part of the implementing curriculum with an approximate value of 63,000 euros annually.

With annual public calls for tenders in the field of primary school education, we cofinance many programmes and projects of NGOs and public institutions.

• Every year, we spend nearly 380,000 euros for youth research projects, projects for primary school students in the field of leisure and preventive activities, complementary activities and contents from the field of technology, and experimentations as well as municipal events for children and students. The programmes of childcare during school breaks are very well attended, i.e. by over 2,000 children every year. Additional 171,000 euros a year go to primary schools for the implementation of various projects for students.
• We annually co-finance preventive programmes in the field of addiction prevention in the approximate value of 270,000 euros. 

Ljubljana, a UNICEF-supported “Child Friendly City”

In 2007, we joined the network of UNICEF-supported “Child Friendly Cities” and thus committed ourselves to promote the development of programmes that will help us become a kind and safe city for children and adolescents. Ljubljana has over 140 Safe Spots (a total of 600 in Slovenia). We have set them up in many of our kindergartens, schools, libraries, youth centres, and other institutions and companies of COL. Throughout the city, they can also be found at several different shops, banks, insurance companies, and other public places. The qualified persons Unicef Safe Spot logo at these spots provide the children protection, help, or simply advice.