Budapest, May 7, 2010 16:00

Customers calling the Telekom Donation Line at 1788 or sending a text message in May and June 2010 will support the Equestrian Academy Sports Club of Kaposvár.

Five May 07, 2010years ago, recognising local needs, the equestrian sports club started to ride children whose developmental and behaviour problems due to mental handicap, autism or conduct disorder can be treated well through hippo-therapy conducted in the framework of the Equestrian Academy SC.

The Kaposvár sports club provides services for handicapped children whose complex age and handicap specific development cannot go without therapeutic riding. Among participants are autistic and mentally handicapped children who have difficulties in perceiving, if at all, external stimuli. Hippo-therapy, however, lets them have a partner and a friend they can rely on and with whom they can play and develop together. The therapy is helpful for the hearing impaired children whose ability to speak is belated as well as for multiply impaired children, because helping them communicate is an important step in their development. This special method may also yield convincing results with children who have other impairments (e.g. learning disability, hyperactivity, conduct and behaviour problems, and orthopaedic impairment). Therapeutic riding may also help, among others, personality development and the development of children with mental injuries.

Hippo-therapy is not a branch of sports. It is a complementary and individual therapeutic treatment aimed at improving posture and movement. It is equally as important to emphasize the psychological value inherent in the cooperation between the child and the horse. There is a great number of children who have become alienated from the world because of negative experiences they have gathered from people around them. However, they have an inherent ability to re-open to the world through an animal. These children always make friends with an animal first and only then can they open up to the therapist. Therapeutic riding is a complex individual or group exercise aimed at development and education, which, in addition to riding also contains hippo-gymnastics (voltige) and horse-tending. Due to the positive impact of being near a horse, establishing physical contact before and after the exercises (caressing, tending, harnessing) is also part of the treatment.

The club provides the treatment to children in consideration of equity. The funds necessary for this come from donations and participation in competitions so that they can continue to provide their developmental activities free of charge. Additional information about the organization is available at the www.lovasakademia.hu web site.

As a leading info-communication provider, Magyar Telekom considers it important to support preventive health care in Hungary. The Telekom Donation Line known from the slogan: "1788 - the humane line" has been operating for seven years and can be accessed from both the fixed line and mobile networks. Calls and text messages initiated from either line cost HUF 100, which amount is tax-free (exception: calls initiated from Domino pre-paid cards). The price of all calls received over the two months will go as a donation of the callers to the Equestrian Academy Sports Club, which will use the funds for providing free-of-charge hypo-therapeutic healing activities.

About Magyar Telekom
Magyar Telekom is Hungary's biggest provider of telecom services. It provides a full range of telecommunications and infocommunications (ICT) services including fixed line and mobile telephony, data transmission and non-voice as well as IT and systems integration services. The business activities of Magyar Telekom are managed by two business units: Consumer services (the home-related services brand T-Home and the mobile communications brand T-Mobile) and Business services (T-Systems brand). Magyar Telekom is the majority owner of Makedonski Telekom, the leading fixed line and mobile operator in Macedonia and it holds a majority stake in Crnogorski Telekom, the leading telecommunications operator in Montenegro. Magyar Telekom's majority shareholder (59.21%) is MagyarCom Holding GmbH, fully owned by Deutsche Telekom AG.
For further information visit www.telekom.hu.