Sõbralt Sõbrale — “Friend to Friend” — turns 35 this year, marking three and a half decades of charitable work run by Estonia’s Free Church congregations. The story began in 1991, when the Estonian Free Church congregations’ union (EKB Koguduste Liit) set up an aid fund called Sõbra Käsi, or “Friend’s Hand”. Swedish mission church congregations had begun sending consignments of aid to the newly re-independent Estonia, where shop shelves were short of food and many people had lost their jobs.
Someone had to receive those shipments and get them to the people who needed them, and at the time there was neither a system nor a body of people to do it. Through the newly created fund a nationwide network was built up, and aid reached those in need free of charge through local congregations. In 1992 alone, close to a thousand tonnes of food and more than 170,000 kilogrammes of clothing arrived in Estonia through the Sõbra Käsi fund, along with school desks, refrigerators, hospital supplies and even a tractor.
The first second-hand shop opened in 1995 on Põhja puiestee in Tallinn, and the model has not changed in principle since. Goods bought or donated in the charity’s shops now fund congregations’ social projects and youth work, and the work of the Sõbralt Sõbrale counselling centre. The organisation reports that its shop network supported roughly 600 people with goods last year, reaching families across Estonia — among them a mother who left a violent relationship with her six children, and whose local shop assembled children’s clothing to her measurements and delivered it to the family’s new home.
Writing for the Free Church, charity manager Kristiina Krabi-Klanberg framed the anniversary simply as an act of gratitude to everyone who has taken part. “Every purchase and every donated item in our shops becomes, through charitable projects, something you cannot buy in a shop,” she wrote. The 35th year, she added, is about helping families to be stronger.
(Originally published in Estonian. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Estonian Free Church (EKB) / Sõbralt Sõbrale — https://kogudused.ee/kust-sai-sobralt-sobrale-alguse/
