In the winter of 2017 temperature would sink record low in many nights – it would be around -20 degrees Celsius even in Budapest. We responded by organising the first event of a series of “Crisis!” actions in collaboration with the Age of Hope Children’s Protection Foundation. Our goal was and has been to help people living on the streets, to help protect them from hypothermia, to direct socitety’s attention to their situation and to help the work of social assistance institutions of Budapest.
We established our base in two venues, where we, with our volunteers, collected and packed donations, and prepared sandwiches and tea. During the 6 days of our first action we delivered 2.8 tons of non-perishable food, 2400 blankets, almost 500 isolation foils, more than 200 packages of hand and foot warmers, 350 kilograms of donated clothing, 343 polifoams and 182 sleeping bags to those living on the streets via emergency and regular shelters. 2000 donators visited us and 600 volunteers took part in the work during these couple of days. As a reult, we prepared more than 10000 sandwiches on the coldes days of the year.
Since then we have organised a Crisis action every year for the duration the weather has demanded. The headlines in Hungarian press reporting on the action read: „an unprecedented cooperation for the homeless”.