Zadar hospital received a check for EUR 103,406 raised in the OTP Round Up fund raising scheme

OTP Round Up! fund raising scheme launched by OTP banka in cooperation with Mastercard gathered a family of almost 20 thousand good people who have done great things together by setting aside small amounts of money. 

Other donation initiatives such as the humanitarian chess tournament Damin's Gambit in the Croatian style and the Greencajt conference contributed as well which increased the raised amount.  Thanks to all of them and the initial donation of 125,000 euros paid by OTP banka and Mastercard at the beginning of each donation cycle, we have so far helped procure the equipment and refurbish eight children's wards in seven cities across Croatia with almost 800,000 euros. In 2024, we are rounding up for the children's departments of the Pula General Hospital and Clinical Hospital Centre Split.

In the fourth cycle of the OTP Round Up scheme, which ended at the end of December 2023, a total of EUR 206,812 was raised for the procurement of equipment for children's wards in the Zadar General Hospital and the Osijek Clinical Hospital Centre. The donation check was presented to Dr Željko Čulina, the director of the hospital in Zadar, by Balázs Békeffy, President of the Board of OTP banka, and they were joined by humanitarians - Gibonni as an ambassador of this project and Marin Čilić, our famous tennis player whose foundation OTP banka cooperates with as a supporter of the humanitarian tennis tournament and scholarships awarded by the foundation.

“I am really proud of our bank and I thank everyone who participated together with us in collecting this amount - our scheme partner, Mastercard, and every client who responded to the initiative and showed that when there are many of us, together we can do great things. We will continue with our scheme, and thank you to Marin and Gibonni for joining us and supporting our efforts to provide the best possible conditions in hospitals for the children of Croatia. I am especially pleased by the satisfaction on the faces of all the doctors and other medical staff with the total amount and hopefully it will at least make their daily efforts and sacrifice a little easier," said Balázs Békeffy, President of the Board of OTP Bank, upon his visit to the Zadar hospital.

The director of the Zadar General Hospital, Dr Željko Čulina, said on this occasion: "On behalf of our smallest patients, their parents, the entire medical staff of the Zadar General Hospital and myself, I thank you for this extremely important donation intended for the Department of Paediatrics. Zadar paediatrics, without a doubt, is ranked alongside the paediatric departments of larger health institutions, if we look at the equipment it has. However, it has been suffering for many years – due to a lack of space. The department of pulmonology was their tenant for a long time. With the completion of the Day Hospital building, it finally got its own space and left Paediatrics. Now the complete building is again in the "possession" of the Department of Paediatrics and we are already in the process of redesigning it according to the needs and wishes of the Department. The plan is to announce a tender for construction works and the refurbishment of the space soon. An endoscopy unit for children will be formed on the 2nd floor, in the part that until recently was used by the Department of Pulmonology. There, under general anesthesia, endoscopic examinations will be performed on children. Now they are performed in the endoscopy unit of the Gastroenterology Department of the Clinic for Internal Diseases, where the conditions are adapted to adults, not children. All of this makes us very happy because our youngest will no longer have to go to other cities for these subspecialty examinations. The plan is to provide adequate space for parents so that they can be with their children during hospital treatment and feel comfortable at the same time."

In October 2020, in cooperation with Mastercard, OTP banka initiated a large fundraising scheme titled OTP Round Up! in order to contribute together with clients to better and more accessible healthcare at children’s wards in hospitals.  The scheme works in a way that OTP banka clients who hold Mastercard cards can round up the sums they pay in their contactless transactions to the nearest whole euro and with each transaction at any point of sale in Croatia or online, the amount of the donation account, opened exclusively for the purpose of this scheme, increases. The maximum amount of donation per transaction is EUR 0.09. The scheme runs in cycles, where the donations collected in each cycle go to two children’s hospitals or children’s wards in hospitals. Each cycle ends at the end of the calendar year, when the funds are credited to the hospitals. The fundraising meter is wound back, but it never starts at zero, given that OTP banka and Mastercard donate EUR 125,000 at the beginning of each cycle. 

In the first cycle, the Šibenik Hospital Paediatric Ward and the Neonatology of the Zagreb Clinical Hospital (also known as Petrova) each received a donation of EUR 70.000 for the procurement of necessary equipment. The total of EUR 215,000 raised in the second cycle went toward the ultra-sound for the Paediatric Cardiology Ward of the Children’s Clinic in Split, and for refurbishment of the rooms at the Children’s Surgery at Klaićeva in Zagreb. In the third cycle, in 2022, we rounded up for the children’s wards of the County Hospital in Čakovec and General Hospital Dubrovnik to the accounts of which almost EUR 230,000 was credite. At the end of December 2023, the fourth cycle was completed, and the raised amount of EUR 206,000 was paid to the General Hospital Zadar and the Clinical Hospital Osijek to procure the necessary equipment for the children’s wards.

The "Round Up” scheme continued in 2024, thus proving the bank's commitment to initiating positive social activities once again.

For more information about the OTP Round Up scheme, visit:

https://www.otpbanka.hr/otp-zaokruzi