Czech Life | All stories

The Czech family has changed in many ways in the past two decades, with new values and gender models entering the homes, and Communist-era mentality and standards partly waning. One growing phenomenon that few want to talk about is the increasing number of single mothers. Currently, about one in every five children in this country grows up with a single parent. And most of the around 200,000 single caretakers are women. Within the EU, the Czech Republic has one of the highest percentages of single mothers within its population.

Following the recent election, there has been a renewed focus on party sponsoring, including an expected shift by some donors to newer political parties following poor results by more traditional ones that held the playing field until now. The shift is being studied by politickefinancovani.cz, headed by American sociologist and teacher at Prague’s Institute of Sociology, Michael L. Smith. He told me more about his role in the project and how the major focus continues to be the need for greater transparency.

The number of foreigners working in Czech households is on the rise, although there are few exact statistics about this relatively unofficial economic sector. More and more Czechs hire part-time cleaners and live-in nannies from Ukraine, Belarus, the Philippines and many other countries. What happens to them behind closed doors, though, is not a topic many like to talk about. A new NGO campaign to draw attention to the rights of migrant domestic workers decided to take an unusual approach to the matter – recruiting a big-shot ad agency and a glitzy

Playgrounds and school yards are by nature a place for fun, games and laughter. But often they are not made with the needs of the children in mind. This year, a unique type of playground was created at a school in the Bohnice district of Prague, which is meant to aid teachers in their quest to improve their students’ speaking skills and overcome certain impairements. In this Czech Life, we visit the Don Bosco school and talk to the people who helped create the first specialized speech therapy playground.

You can meet them at a managers’ meeting and behind the counter at a store, they are vital part of the Czech automotive industry but are also among the leaders in most other sectors of Czech society. Twenty years after the velvet divorce, Slovaks are a major presence in the Czech Republic, especially in its cities. Beside job opportunities, one of the things that bring young Slovaks to this country are the universities. What attracts them to a Czech education? And how do they perceive their lives in a country that is so much like their own?

Canoeing or rafting in the Czech Republic for many is more than a sport or pastime it is a way of life, a tradition going back decades that is capped on summer evenings with summer bonfires, pork sausages (špekáčky), music and beer. Web developer Igor Lobovský, an avid canoeist himself, earlier this year launched a no-nonsense website (with a nostalgic 8-bit logo) called Vodáci sobě helping users navigate among the country’s many boat rental companies. The aim was not only to help users get a good deal but also to help smaller companies get broader

In the warmer summer months Praguers have started flocking to cafes, just as much as to beer gardens, enjoying a dark cup of joe, good company, and often pleasant street-side seating. Some cafes around the city have begun to offer much more sophisticated coffee choices that the traditional infamous Czech ‘Turek’ coffee or the misnamed ‘presso’. To find out how and what’s brewing in Prague these days, I went to visit Jaroslav Tuček at his small, but quite well-known, café in the Karlín district.

As waters slowly recede from the flooded areas around Bohemia, professionals and volunteers intensify the relief efforts. Non-profit organizations around the country have been working hard all week, collecting material and financial aid, and offering invaluable help with clean-up to the thousands of people who returned to flooded homes.

Child obesity continues to be a problem in the Czech Republic, having risen markedly in recent years. The popularity of increasingly passive activities from spending more and more time on the computer to the internet certainly have not helped. That’s where organisers of two projects underway – Škola plná zdraví and Česko se hýbe – hope to make a major difference.

One old proverb goes: “The way to a man's heart is through his stomach”. It may be true, that good cooking can win a man’s love. The pastry chef Iveta Fabešová believes that when it come to women, it is the cooking itself that can bring them closer together. The author of a number of popular cookbooks, Iveta decided to test out this hypothesis in a new multi-media, and multi-flavored, project Mothers and Daughters, or Matky a dcery in Czech.