Volunteering in Poland
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- Created on Saturday, 04 March 2017 08:05
- Written by poland
Charity is the main indicator of a healthy society. There are many people and animals depending on our help all around the world. Differences in the distribution of wealth make it even worse and the problem will probably rise even bigger in the near future. Man-made and natural disasters lead to famine, suffering, degradation and cause a great loss of lives. Humanitarian aid is needed in poor and wealthy countries.
Empathy is a complex feeling which gives rise to amazing actions and make all of us humans. Poland, among other countries, has amazing movements providing help for those in need. A big part of these movements is volunteering. They provide financial and logistic help.
In Poland there are a lot of charities that try to help and save the people. You can find signs of charity campaigns everywhere, it’s always some old leaflet or a poster. So, we guess, now you are curious what volunteering here looks like?
In our school in Elbląg we have lots of forms of volunteering. We collect food for poor families from our school before Christmas. We collect mostly needed food items like rice, pasta, flour, salt and also we collect household detergents. We also collect blankets and food for dogs and cats which are left alone in the animal shelter. All students in our school collect plastic bottle caps for diseased children in our country. Everyone is collecting them so that it is possible to buy a wheelchair or to pay for the medical treatment.
Also students can provide educational help for younger children. They help them with doing homework or give them extra lessons in subjects they are good at ( for free, of course). That is really helpful. In Frombork, the small town we cooperate with, volunteering service is not as popular as in bigger Polish cities. However, there is Caritas Youth Centre of Warmia Archdiocese. Caritas Youth Centre consists of a youth hostel, which ensures accommodation for children, youth and adults.
There is also a Self-Help Center, which is a place where people with disabilities learn to perform daily activities. Caritas also provides Occupational Therapy Classes and an eating place for fifty people. Other type of volunteering in Formbork is school volunteering. In Frombork there are a primary school and a secondary school where children do lots of different things as part of volunteering, like collecting food or money for various charities, e.g. Great Orchestra of Christmas Aid, which is the biggest, non-governmental, charity organization in Poland. Once a year it engages thousands of volunteers all over the country, regardless their age, to raise money into small boxes, giving them a red heart-shaped sticker instead. All the money is then spent on buying medical equipment for hospitals, mostly children hospitals.
While trying to compare charity in both cities Elbląg and Frombork it’s important to remember about the differences in the number of population. Frombork and Elbląg have different problems because of that. While big organizations like Great Orchestra of Christmas Aid or Caritas are present in the whole country, acting in large cities and small villages, smaller movements tend to try to go more public in neighbouring cities. It’s not easy for a town to support and maintain an animal shelter or help the homeless and on top of that gather money for the poor.
Because of that it’s really important to volunteer wherever one lives. Many schools are trying to involve students in charity, teaching pupils to participate in special interest groups. Besides the fact that a simple act of help brings smiles to the faces of children, students can also learn some useful skills. Cooperation and learning how to act in a volunteering group are one of the most important abilities. Nowadays parents encourage children to help each other. It’s an amazing thing.
We think that we live during the biggest rise of awareness. We understand the importance of charity. We’re really thankful to be part of those movements and we think that we should constantly improve in that field.
by Ola, Karolina & Wojtek