THE SECOND Sunday in May is Mothers’ Day and in addition to family celebrations, the Union of Mothers’ Centres in Slovakia organised for the seventh time an international event called a Mile for Mothers. This year the event asked people to cover a symbolic mile by walking – either alone, with a baby pram, or with a child on one’s shoulders – or even on a bicycle, between 15:00 and 18:00 on May 9.
Altogether, 44 mothers’ centres in 35 towns and cities in Slovakia took part and 17,210 people walked the symbolic mile. Eight other countries participated in the Mile for Mothers event: the US, Argentina, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia. The idea is to walk or ride a mile for one specific mother but also to symbolically recognise all the mothers of the world and honour the difficult and practically never-ending task of being a mother.
Katarína Králiková, the event’s coordinator told the TASR newswire that 1,963 people participated in Bratislava, 1,278 in Senica and 1,094 in Trenčín. The Mile for Mothers events were accompanied by concerts and cultural programmes, sometimes prepared by the mothers’ centres.
The largest accompanying event was a national fundraising effort called Ďakujem, že si, mama (Thank you for being, mum) in which people could purchase a magnet in the shape of a sun with the proceeds going to support the work of Slovakia’s mothers’ centres.
In Košice, 906 people participated and the programme included awards presented by the mayor, František Knapík, to ten mothers. These included activists from the Haliganda mothers’ centre, Margita Ujváriová, a mother to ten children, and Katarína Šturlajterová, who is the mother of a physically disabled son and who helps other mothers in the Aktívny život (Active Life) association.
After the ceremony, Mayor Knapík opened the Mile for Mothers walk and walked the route alongside a mother with a pram.
“We are happy and rather surprised by the huge participation and interest of parents. This year, the number of participants was a record for Košice. Last year, 560 people took part,” Silvia Sorgerová, the head of Haliganda mothers’ centre told the SITA newswire.