Beats for Love is not only about music, but also about helping others. Public collections have become a festival tradition, and this year they raised a record amount.
The public collection at the Beats for Love festival raised the highest amount in its history in 2019. This year the festival organisers divided 370 thousand between two recipients. They supported two seriously ill young people, seven-year-old Emma Plačková and twenty-three-year-old Honzík Kuňák. At fifteen months, Emma was scalded by boiling water from a cracked kettle, and since then she has suffered not only from burns but also from post-traumatic brain damage. Honzík, who lives with his three brothers and his mother, has cerebral palsy, quadriparesis and an eye defect.
The money for Emma and Honzík was raised through a public collection held directly at the festival, by selling colourful festival wristbands. Exactly CZK 183,973 was collected, the highest amount raised so far. „It gives me great joy to see that year after year more and more people take part in the collection. Visitors of all age groups help; some happily buy several wristbands every day. Helping others has become an inseparable complement to the music programme and a tradition of our festival,” notes Kamil Rudolf, director of Beats for Love. As is now traditional, he doubled the amount raised, so that Emma and Honzík ultimately shared CZK 370 thousand equally between them. From the proceeds, Emma’s parents will pay for neurorehabilitation and special spa stays, and will cover the remaining cost of a wheelchair and a positioning chair for use at home. Honzík’s mother will use the funds to buy an adapted motor vehicle, and to pay for an assistant’s services, rehabilitation and a swimming pool.
Charitable activities have been part of Beats for Love for 6 years now. These are charitable projects supporting regional charitable institutions as well as individuals in difficult life situations. Over the years the festival organisers have distributed approximately one million crowns among recipients. They have helped, for example, the patients and bereaved families of the Strom života mobile hospice, and patients of the cardiology department of Ostrava City Hospital. The festival also supports the development of disadvantaged people — in the past, deaf dancers, physically disabled DJs and a blind singer have performed on the festival’s stages.
