Return to work after parental leave is not always easy. Ideally, a woman returns to her former position and her employer is willing to, for example, adjust or reduce her working hours. However, many women cannot return to their positions and are limited by nursery school hours as well as their lack of confidence when seeking a job. This was the case of Martina Králíková (33).

Martina lives with her family in Týnec nad Sázavou. She finished grammar school and worked for the local authority for some time and then as a restaurant manager. Then came a six-year parental leave. Last spring, Martina started thinking about her future employment. She could not return to the restaurant due to her children. There are not many job vacancies in Týnec and, as most mothers after a long parental leave, she was worried about how she would handle her new job.

“My parental leave ended in autumn 2017. Six months before that, I started looking at job ads to see what the opportunities and mainly the employers’ requirements are. I wanted to get ready for job seeking. After such a long time, I just had the feeling that I cannot do anything,” says the mother of two sons.

After that, Martina came across a course on Facebook offering mothers of little children a chance to improve their computer skills. “I was thinking about a retraining and this caught my immediate attention because the course was for free and included babysitting during the classes,” describes Martina.

The course was held for about three months. Every Friday, eight to ten mothers including Martina used to meet on the premises of the Krokodýl (Crocodile) Children’s Centre in Benešov. Three teachers, one after the other, taught them about Word, Excel or the principle of web storage, taught them how to make presentations, leaflets, posters or websites, to start an e-shop or monitor website traffic. The atmosphere in the course was more than friendly – when her son did not like it in the children’s centre, Martina could take him to class with her. She is still in touch with some of the mothers.

All course participants received a completion certificate. “The course was a real boost for me. I refreshed and extended my computer knowledge but mainly, I could put it in my CV,” she adds. “The course was coming to its end when I met another group of mothers in the Krokodýl Centre who were just starting. Suddenly, it was as if I had seen myself those three months ago – when I was full of worries, did not know what I would do and whether I would get a job,” remembers Martina.

She found a job easily after that. She works as a pallet management worker in a logistics company in Jažlovice. “In the course we learned how to work with tables and that is very useful for me now. I made a presentation for our Hungarian branch recently and I am able to better find what I need on the internet,” Martina names the benefits of the course. “I definitely recommend such courses to all mothers. It will truly boost your confidence,” says Martina.

Up to ninety women will participate in the course.