FOR SUPERHERO BABIES
During its 11th edition and for the third time in a row,, the KROKODIL festival had a humanitarian component. In June of 2019, the “For Superhero Babies” campaign was launched. The campaign is dedicated to prematurely born babies, with the goal to collect funds for purchasing the necessary equipment for the Institute of Neonatology.
All over the world, one of ten babies is born prematurely. Every year, 15 million premature babies are born, while in Serbia more than 4000 such babies are born a year, or 11 each day!
Among those babies is Nora. Nora was born in the 24th week. Having been born extremely underdeveloped, she, together with a team of doctors and nurses at the institute of Neonatology, has been fighting for life every day since. Nora is our little superhero.
The team working in the Intensive Care unit at the Belgrade Institute of Neonatology – Dr. Hajdarpašić, Dr. Stoiljković, Dr. Jovanović, Dr. Kovačević and others – twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, are tirelessly helping prematurely born babies to survive and grow. The dedication, work and love of these people is unreserved and immeasurable as is their expertise and conscientiousness.
However, that’s not all superhero babies need. Machines for artificial respiration, respirators, and injection syringe pumps are just some of the things missing at the Institute for Neonatology. The first part of the “For Superhero Babies” humanitarian campaign started during the KROKODIL festival in June 2019, and lasted until July 2019. On the donacije.rs platform, more than 170.000 dinars have been collected.
The campaign continued during October, when celebrities participated in the Play and Win campaign as a part of the program Among Us, which aired on TV Nova S, The guests on the first show were Vladimir Arsenijević and Milena Berić with little Nora. 2500EUR were raised in this part of the campaign.
On November 17, we marked the World Day for Prematurely Born Children at KROKODIL Center and presented the book “Put roditeljstva: od mrvice do zvezde. Dnevnik mog prevremenog porođaja. Priručnik za roditelje” by Milica Lazarevic-Jekić. The campaign to raise money for the Institute of Neonatology continued throughout November.
On December 22, Association KROKODIL organized a charity dinner for superhero babies. All proceeds from the evening went to the Institute for Neonatology in Belgrade. In addition to writer Lana Bastašić who sang and played traditional Mexican, Catalan and Cuban songs on the ukulele, writer Vladimir Arsenijević also played guitar and sang, Marko Vidojkovic also performed his imitations of local politicians. Pianist Sara Mandić and violinist Jelena Funtek performed some of the most popular works of classical music.
Throughout the evening, all guests were invited to participate in the auction of artwork by some of the authors who have been exhibited at the KROKODIL Center for the past 14 months. All proceeds from the works sold went to the Institute of Neonatology. A total of 50000 dinars was raised.
