Application Process

We're planning to go to Croatia again in 2012, and are planning furiously now. The dates for the Trip are likely to be in the last half of June and first week of July 2012, but until Ryanair publish their flight routes we cannot be any more definite than that.

There will be an Open Evening when you can learn more about the trip, on Tuesday 4th October 2011 from 6.30pm in the Lord Ashcroft Building room 007.

Applications to go on the trip are now open

An Application Form is available to download from the link on this page. The deadline for these forms is Monday 17th October 2011. Forms not received in hard copy by then will NOT be considered.

Because time is short, we need ONE meeting for the new team before Christmas. Even though the selection process is yet to take place, please note NOW the first date: Tuesday 15th November 2011 in the Lord Ashcroft Building room 007, at 6pm. If you are selected, you will then have these this date in your diary. Attendance at meetings is not optional.

In 1997 the first group of students and staff from Anglia Ruskin University traveled out to Kraljevica, a coastal town on the Adriatic. They went to an old Moorish palace that had for 100 years been used as a hospital for the treatment of allergies, particularly asthma. Following the war in the 1980s and 90s a number of displaced adults and children with learning difficulties were housed at the hospital which was ill equipped to cope with their very special needs.

The hospital lacked basic features such as lifts and security gates and years of neglect and the Adriatic weather had left much of it crumbling.

The staff was stretched to the limit and could only provide basic levels of care. Few had experience or training in caring for people with special needs and Croatian society is not generally inclusive of disabled people.

Over the past fourteen years successive groups of students have cleaned, plastered, rubbed down, dug, painted, cleared and decorated. Those with skills have used them; those without have learned under supervision. Previously derelict areas are now not only usable but also cheerful and fun for both patients and staff. Last year a Disney mural was a great success!

Students not only spend time on the fabric of the building but with the patients for whom one to one contact and play may be a rare luxury. For many students the friendships formed with the children and adults at the hospital have proved the most important part of the project.

Some staff from the hospital have (via Anglia Ruskin's nursing school) visited learning disability units in this country and have taken back ideas. The hospital now has a hydrotherapy pool and sensory room. Physiotherapists are employed, restraint is now rarely used and in September 2004 the children had their first opportunity to attend school. Attempts are also made to encourage families to become more involved with their children’s lives.

Due mainly to the commitment and enthusiasm of the hospital staff together with the input of Mission Croatia and other charities, enormous steps forward have been made at Kraljevica. In recent years groups of students have also gone to other centres where progress has been much slower. Only students on a second trip visit the other sites as these can be much more challenging in terms of the levels of care. For the past two years the hospital at Stancic, the largest in the country has been the second site. The physical work (decorating several large Victorian wards) has been hard, but equally challenging is the reality of life in a large Eastern European hospital.

Some of the materials used are donated or bought in this country and sent out via a lorry convoy but much is also bought locally which also benefits the local economy. Students live very simply at the hospitals but the staff at Kraljevica are also keen that they enjoy Croatia and its culture.

Many students describe this two-week trip as “life changing”. Some student nurses have done placements in the hospital and some have gone back independently. It is only possible to guess at the small differences that have been made to the staff and patients by the enthusiasm and energy of the students.

people working on Mission Croatia