Our Heritage

In the 1950s, while taking care of children and their free time, the Union of Societies “Our Children” Croatia recognized the importance of resorts for children. From the 1950s, when the Centre for Summer Resorts was founded, to the beginning of the 1990s, almost 160,000 children vacationed in a total of 30 resorts on the Adriatic. With strong support and in partnership with local communities, children’s summer holidays have become a childhood symbol for generations of children. For many children, the summer vacation with the Society “Our Children” was also the first opportunity to swim in the sea.

Special attention was paid to the activities that the children engaged in during the summer vacation, and they were tailored according to the highest pedagogical standards, with a lot of creativity, talent and love.

Unfortunately, that has changed drastically because almost all the children’s resorts, which the network of the Union of Societies “Our Children” in Croatia had in their disposal, were transferred to the state and town administrations and thus repurposed.

Meanwhile, tourism has become the most important economic branch in Croatia, and our country has become a world hit destination. Foreign media publish eulogies about our beaches, nature and sea, so it is not surprising that almost 15 million arrivals were achieved in 2022 alone. People from all over the world leave their usual surroundings to spend their summer on the Adriatic Sea.

Amid such great achievements and successes, one important but painful thing is overlooked – and that is that many children living in Croatia have never even seen their own sea.

Our tourism results are excellent, the scenes of our coast and its most desirable destinations beautiful, but the social statistics data is inexorable[1]: in 2020, around 126,000 children in Croatia are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, which is 18.4% of children under the age of 18, i.e., almost every fifth child.

The revitalization of the organized children’s summer vacation programme is a long-term strategic project that the Union of SOC approaches ambitiously, but also responsibly. We plan to use our heritage – the experience gathered in more than 70 years of child care and mobilize all our knowledge, talents and competences, developed through decades of implementing summer vacation programmes.

Because … the sea is for every child!

[1] Dragičević, T. and Družić-Ljubotina, O. (2022). Child poverty – consequences and protective factors. In “Pravnik”: The Law and Society Review, 56, 108, 102-140.