Help People with Intellectual Disabilities -Serbia

The end of every year is filled with the bustle of activity and a great deal of anticipation. The end of 2023 was even more exciting than most years for KEC. Like most families at the end of each year we pull out box of tree decorations from the back of the closet, dust them off and together we hang them on our tree. This year we did that but we were also asked to go bigger and to go public. Pairing up with McDonald's, our long term partner, we submitted a tree to the third annual New Year's humanitarian action at the Jevremovac Botanical Garden. McDonald's reserved one of the twelve enormous trees in the botanical garden that were part of the charity event and asked us for help decorating it. For this tree we didn't just pull out the box in the back of the closet. Rather we handmade each and every decoration with the help of our extremely talented in-house artist, Jelena Zvezdic, who came up with the overall design and then assisted our beneficiaries to create these magnificent one of a kind decorations over twelve days. This alone would have been a big event for KEC but what made it even more special was that McDonald's staff came to the KEC center and helped us make the decorations. Then we all met up again at the botanical gardens to decorate the tree. And of course if we are being honest it was also great that our friends from McDonald's also brought us dinner. What could be better? Well, actually, winning the tree competition. And we did!!! On December 21, 2023 during the Jevremovac Botanical Garden's annual holiday event our tree was declared the winner both by getting the most votes on social media and by a special jury consisting of: actress Vesna Trivalic, Prof. Ana Nikezic, Prof. Tijana Cvetic Antic, Jelena Bratic from the Serbian Philanthropic Forum and Zeljko Mitkovski from the Ana and Vlade Divac Foundation. The botanical garden was filled with visitors, media and KEC beneficiaries who were delighted with the jury's decision. We celebrated our victory a few days later back in the KEC center around our own little tree with our families at our annual holiday celebration. We wish all of you a peaceful and joyous new year. We hope to have many more exciting activities in 2024 and hope you do as well.