Nikola Sedláčková is Project Manager in Trenčianska nadácia representing the foundation:
I’ve been a volunteer with the foundation for over 15 years, and over the past five years, I’ve gradually taken on the role of project manager, overseeing several of our initiatives. We’re a small foundation, led by two dedicated volunteers, but we operate with big hearts.

Our core mission is re-granting — we support grassroots community projects through open calls, and we also run a few of our own initiatives. Outside of the foundation, I work as a facilitator and soft-skills trainer through my own business. I am a certified Lumina Learning Practitioner and a trained facilitator in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method, which gives me the opportunity to build bridges between the third sector and the business world at the local level.

Responsibility Grows From Your Ownership
Hello, I’m Nikola Sedláčková. I’m a project manager at the Trenčín Foundation. We are a community foundation, so what we do is help people and communities make our city better — or make the places where we live better. We do this through different projects and programs. One of them is called the Donors Club. People who become members can support us by donating even very small amounts of money. By collecting these small contributions, we are able to gather a larger fund, and then individuals or communities can apply for support for their projects. In many cases, these projects focus on green topics.

What we really value in our foundation is that when people care about their environment, they feel responsible for it — and because of that, they genuinely take care of it. It’s not only about the environment or climate. It’s also about how we feel, how we relax, and how we live in our neighborhoods and surroundings. This is the approach we like to take at the Trenčín Foundation. We believe that people care more about places they have helped to build, and that a sense of responsibility grows out of ownership. We also supported a project by two guys who called themselves Green Watch.

In Brezina, our forest park, people organize activities to separate and collect rubbish and to make the park cleaner. These projects were also supported by the Green Foundation.

As for me, I’ve lived in Trenčín for a long time. I was born in a small village near the city, and I used to travel to Trenčín by bus every day to go to school. Now I live here, and I really enjoy the city. It’s a great place to live, to walk, and to use bicycles.

What I notice is that we often rely on cars, even in city centers and near schools. And that’s a pity, because we have really beautiful places and many destinations that are easily reachable by bicycle. My dream is that we start using bicycles much more in our daily lives.

As someone who lives here, I can really see the difference between winters. Many years ago — or even just several years ago — we had real ice. The lakes were frozen, and we could go ice skating.

This year, it was actually really nice to see the Váh River frozen, and the lake frozen as well. But it’s not usual anymore.