Atlantic Bridge in Jicin

The work of Atlantic Bridge in Jicin started through Bohunka Smolikova who, with her two children, came to our IYF in 2005. During the festival Bohunka and her son became enthusiastic about Atlantic Bridge and wondered how they could start an Atlantic Bridge 'outpost' in their town. Bohunka, who taught English in a grammar school, got her school interested in hosting a group from Holland. 

In April 2006, a First Contact Team from Tholen (NLD) came to Jicin to ‘survey the land’ and lay the basis for a partnership and to start exchanges. During the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007, various visits and exchanges took place with the result of nine students travelling to Tholen in June 2007. Two weeks later the Czech students hosted their Dutch and American (Lansdale, PA) partner groups. In the fall of 2007, the Protestant church in Jicin also joined this partnership, giving us the opportunity to develop long-term youth work in this region. The church has offered us the use of their building as a youth training and resource center if we can help them renovate and restore it. Presently we have a loosely organized group of eight young people who have entered the Bridgebuilders program.

As we bring young people, leaders and expression teams from different countries to the Jicin region, we hope to build a broad foundation involving churches, the city hall and other youth organizations. This depends on the number of young people and leaders we can mobilize in the coming years. The key to this will be the increase of partner regions in other countries such as Tholen (NLD) and Lansdale, PA (USA). In these regions we need more churches, schools, teachers and business men to get involved.