Art auction supporting sick children starts on Tuesday

Works of Slovak, Hungarian, and Romanian artists will also be auctioned online.

Volunteers of Bator Tabor playing with children in a Bratislava hospital. Volunteers of Bator Tabor playing with children in a Bratislava hospital. (Source: Courtesy by Bator Tabor)

The Bratislava-based SOGA art auction company is holding an online auction this week to help children suffering severe illnesses.

Alongside the Bátor Tábor Foundation, which runs a range of activities for seriously ill children, the SOGA Auction House is presenting a charity art auction to raise funds supporting children and their families.

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"Thanks to the raised funds, the children will be able to attend camps, our GO! hospital programme, and the school programme helping to smoothen children's return to school after a long treatment," the foundation stated.

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The organisation helps children and their families from four countries – Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland. Besides activities for children, the foundation offers emotional support as well, for example, to families who have suffered the loss of a child.

Art for kids

The exhibition of the auctioned works, with free admission, is available between 10:00 and 18:00 until October 5 on SOGA's premises at Medená 16 in Bratislava.

The exhibition features works by artists like Jana Želibská, Andrej Dúbravský, Milan Adamčiak, Milan Paštéka, Katarína Janečková Walshe, Erik Binder, Roman Ondak, Erik Šille, Rudolf Sikora, Július Koller, Stano Filko, Žofia Dubová, Dorota Sadovská, Jana Zatvarnická, and others.

The activities the foundation provides are free of charge for children, families and schools. The auction annually helps to financially back the cause. This year, a collection of contemporary art carefully curated from works by Slovak, Hungarian and even Romanian artists is serving as the motivation to both support the foundation and obtain something memorable.

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All auctioned works were hand-picked according to the recommendations of artists, and an advisory board consisting of art historians and curators Nina Gažovičová, Alexandra Kusá, Krisztina Hunya and Július Barczi.

The auction will be in-person as well as online. The live auction for registered members starts on October 6, at 20:00. The online auction starts on September 27 at 21:00 with the deadline on October 4, at 21:00, at www.soga.sk.

Range of activities

All the earnings from the auction will fund a range of activities under the foundation’s patronage. Bátor Tábor organises summer camps full of activities for seriously ill children, as well as spring and fall weekend camps for entire families.

The foundation’s GO! Programme concentrates on sick children unable to attend summer camps but who still want to be involved. If their stage of illness restricts them from joining the camp, they can enjoy the hour of fun the foundation brings to hospitals.

To stay connected with one other, an online programme allows children to join the fun from the comfort of their homes.

Changing perspective

The foundation sees an important role in education. A programme consists of activities dedicated to schools - reintegrating sick children among their classmates as they return to school, the report states.

“Research suggests that due to our modern culture and dependence on technology, today’s kids demonstrate 40 percent lower empathy compared to kids of previous decades. We are worried about this alarming trend, and not only because it makes the reintegration of sick children more difficult,” explains Erna Kindli, the CEO of the Bátor Tábor Foundation.

Developing children’s general empathy, tolerance and collaboration skills helps both sides to respect one another and socialise without prejudice, Kindli adds.

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