The aftereffects of Corona, together with increased inflation and high energy prices, have all affected many people over the last year. Those who only have a low income, like many families, or only a small pension, like more and more old people, those who need help to survive due to illness or disability or who are initially dependent on state support after fleeing war, persecution and existential hardship , the more difficult living conditions hit him particularly hard.
How donations for the SZ Advent calendar helped.
(Photo: Jessy Asmus)
Four examples from last year’s appeals for donations show how the SZ readers were able to help people in difficult life situations with their overwhelming commitment to the “Advent Calendar for Good Works of the Süddeutsche Zeitung”. A week before the start of the 75th fundraising campaign, the SZ asks: What did the financial support achieve?
Everything is easier now with a car
Julia’s life only revolves around her son.
(Photo: Catherina Hess)
A year ago, Julia had a wish that she hardly dared to express; it seemed too big to her. And yet she hoped that it would come true. Julia, whose actual name is different, has a son with autism. Since his birth eight years ago, her life has revolved around him. She is a single parent and his illness demands her full attention. Tom, his real name is different, he doesn’t speak much, strangers can only guess what he wants. But his mother knows his needs and needs. Tom goes to a special school, a bus is at the door every morning. But some days he doesn’t want to get in, and Julia doesn’t always know why. Sometimes when Tom has a stomach ache, he presses his little fist to his stomach. But sometimes he throws himself on the sidewalk and cries. Using public transport is a horror for both of them.
A new word has been added to Tom’s small vocabulary since the beginning of the year: “car”. Julia’s great wish was to have her own vehicle. It has been fulfilled. After the report in the SZ, a private donor contacted Julia and Tom and gave them a small used car complete with a child seat and winter tires. The fate of mother and son had touched him so much. “It has made my life much, much easier,” says Julia. Tom likes to drive. He loves looking out the window, says Julia. He feels safe in the car. The two of them went on a lot of trips in the summer. They were at Lake Chiemsee and at the zoo several times. “For seven years I’ve seen almost nothing other than the playgrounds near us,” says Julia. Visits to the doctor with Tom are now much easier.
Bunk bed and hope
Green is the color of hope: “Life is better than last year,” says Adil Gulab, who looked after the six children alone when his wife was seriously ill.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
“Life is better than last year,” says Adil Gulab. His wife can now look after their six children again, “the depression she had since the birth of the last one is no longer so bad.” The 39-year-old still takes four of them every morning to the four different facilities and schools they go to and picks them up again in the evening. Budget with the family resources available.
“The donation saved us a lot last year,” says Gulab on the phone. “A bunk bed for the children, clothes, school supplies, a new washing machine, that was a big help.” The family, which chose a different name to publicly protect their daughters and sons, has been in private bankruptcy since early summer. The city’s debt and insolvency advisory service accompanied them along the way. The primary goal is for clients to be able to stay in their apartment. That has worked so far.
It got to this point because Adil Gulab had a significant loss of earnings during the pandemic as a taxi driver and in his part-time job as a waiter. When his wife became seriously ill, he had to stop caring for her and the children altogether. “I’m now starting again at a supermarket in sales and storage,” he says. And with a “slightly clearer head” he also wants to tackle the outstanding part of his truck driving license.
The world of the Gulabs remains fragile. The father of the family is worried about his wife’s health stability when he is at home less again. And about your own. The 39-year-old has cancer and stopped taking medication two months ago because his blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar levels skyrocketed. “I have to get checked again.” He hasn’t had the time for that lately.
In the trailer for the crib
There are moments that make a journalist happy, even when it comes to people who are not on the bright side of life. But Daniella M. sounds really satisfied on the phone, yes, you could almost say: happy. After an odyssey with traumatizing experiences that the 30-year-old cannot talk about to this day, but whose scars on her body tell their own story, she has settled into her life in Munich. She still suffers from back pain that was almost unbearable a year ago after her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter. But a new mattress, which she was able to purchase thanks to donations from SZ readers, brought relief. “I also found a nice apartment for my daughter and I in Hasenbergl,” says Daniella M. with relief.
Daniella M’s daughter finds her bike trailer quite comfortable as a crèche taxi.
(Photo: private)
And she also got a daycare place for her little one. She drives her daughter to daycare every morning in a bicycle trailer that the young single mother was able to buy used with Advent calendar donations. Now she can take care of her professional future. Daniella M. would like to train as a childcare worker.
Bicycles for the children
A year ago, under the title “The Little Fighter,” the Advent calendar described how Ana P. devotedly looks after her two girls and works hard to give them everything children need in order to have a future. SZ readers then helped her; she was able to buy a bicycle for Victoria, who will soon be eleven, and she received one as a gift for herself. And there was still something left over for the children’s first vacation, even though the visit to Disney World in Paris only lasted three days and the accommodation was in the basement, without heating or hot water.
Ana P.’s two daughters got bicycles.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
“They were still the most beautiful days of my life,” says Ana P. And then came an even more beautiful one: she became the mother of a boy, born at the end of October. She is now separated from her father, with whom she initially lived, and will probably raise the little one alone. But she can count on an unexpected helper who she found after a long search: she has her brother back, whose parents once gave him to an orphanage because of the poverty in Romania, from where a family adopted him.
“I thank God that I found him,” says Ana P. He already works as a cleaner a few S-Bahn stations away and helps her as best he can. Despite her pregnancy, she worked as a cleaner at the Westkreuz retirement home for as long as she could. When the little one can go to daycare, she will go back to work. Because despite all the changes in her life, one thing, the most important thing, has remained the same: she is a “little fighter”.