Repport 2022
When I have started to summarize information for this repport, I tried to find a starting moment for our action.
Of course Russian invasion of 24.02.2022 started everything.
We have started collecting food on 01.03.2022 for the Food Bank and started discussion with UpFoundation (Fundacja Inicjowania Rozwoju from Gdańsk) on an official information point for refugees on 17.03.2022 which started really on 01.04.2022.
Soon it became very clear, what information are the most important for people. The first questions, which we have registered have been asked by two children coming from another district of Gdańsk: where may we get food for dog? May we get some groat?
Afterwards we have decided at once to distribute everything, we could collect via our point, not to forward anything to Food Bank (sorry).
In spring we received many bank transfers and cash donations from private persons from Poland and abroad, especially from Norway, thanks our private contacts, but no any institutional donation.
All donated money were used only for purchases of goods intended for distribution in our point.
In June 2022, on the one hand, we saw the end of money from donations, but on the other hand, systemic aid slowly began to reach us, which we received thanks to cooperation with the UP Foundation. Regret, big part of these supplies, it was remains after laid down similar points from another districts.
We got a total of 4 large deliveries: flour, pates, pasta, washing powder, creams and liquid soap. From Germany we got used school backpacks but filled with goodies and lots of chocolate. Somehow we got a lot of different dish plates - we handed them over to the nearby Zapiecek pizzeria, and they delivered them to the Ukrainian orphane children's home evacuated to Garczyn.
We had some barter transactions: for example, once we were given several kilos cans of hot pepperoni as a gift. We exchanged them for many kilos of flour at a nearby pizzeria and everyone was very happy.
Good people from our neighbourhood systematically supplied us with food, chemicals, clothing, sometimes even with money for shopping, which was pressed into the hand of someone from the point's staff.
Our regional Food Bank (Trójmiejski Bank Żywności) donated us 6 nice transports of food (until 07.12.2022).
In September we received various new backpacks intended for children and teenagers of different ages, who attend to Polish schools, filled with school starter kits.
***
Private donations arrived from time to time and we have gradually became visible for institutions.
The Rotary Club Gdańsk-Sopot-Gdynia two times supported us financially., and thanks to the October support from the Gdańsk Foundation, we do not worry about supplies until Christmas.
The nearby Carrefour shop, as part of their support, delivers goods ordered from them in internet with its own free transport. In all the fuss with goods and deliveries, the B52 gym helps us a lot, they take over deliveries for us if no one is at our Neighborhood Home. If necessary, we can always count on the help of strong people from the gym.
We solve troublesome problems with colds with the help of successive editions of our "neighborhood" sirup.
Everything would be quite nice if not for the strong and constant increase in prices. We can see that for the same money, we could buy much more not so long ago. Life...
Thanks to Biedronka cards (prepaid payment cards worth PLN 300 per month for 3 months), the number of people entitled to our help has formally decreased, but in principle we have not felt it strongly.
Some of refugees get any job, but it is seldom enough well paid, to be able to hire flat for family in open market, feed family, and hopefully send anything home. Reality is, everything goes into rentals and not much is left.
Currently we see more and more Polish people asking us for food help. Hard time is coming to many of us.
People came to us even from quite distant districts of Gdańsk, such as Lipce (formally 12 km from our place).
We officially started registering users when the "Gdańsk Pomaga" card registration system appeared (first paper, manually filled in, then scanned plastic cards or QR codes), but we kept our own registers from the beginning anyway. To this day, we sometimes give help even without registering card, if we see that it is very much needed.
The number of people means the number of entitled people for whom we gave aid - for example, one person could come on behalf of the whole family, so we registered the family.
We will try to update the following statistics on a regular basis.
| date | number of people |
| 11.04.2022 | 269 |
| 25.04.2022 | 103 |
| 2.05.2022 | 105 |
| 8.05.2022 | 164 |
| 16.05.2022 | 152 |
| 23.05.2022 | 141 |
| 30.05.2022 | 123 |
| 6.06.2022 | 105 |
| 13.06.2022 | 110 |
| 20.06.2022 | 124 |
| 27.06.2022 | 130 |
| 4.07.2022 | 70 |
| 11.07.2022 | 77 |
| 18.07.2022 | 82 |
| 25.07.2022 | 137 |
| 1.08.2022 | 177 |
| 8.08.2022 | 145 |
| 16.08.2022 | 165 |
| 22.08.2022 | 228 |
| 29.08.2022 | 158 |
| 26.09.2022 | 101 |
| 3.10.2022 | 147 |
| 10.10.2022 | 164 |
| 17.10.2022 | 196 |
| 24.10.2022 | 148 |
| 31.10.2022 | 123 |
| 07.11.2022 | 130 |
| 14.11.2022 | 138 |
| 21.11.2022 | 126 |
| 28.11.2022 | 133 |
| 05.12.2022 | 165 |
Probably we are one of the last such not really financed points, driven by volunteers, who each week wonder, if there will be enough goods on our shelves.
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Different people come to us with different needs of help, not only material.
Sometimes one have to go together to an office as an interpreter, help fill out a form, explain and translate some complicated official letter from Polish into understandeable language (usually into Russian). Sometimes there is need to advise what to do or explain that nothing needs to be done and nothing will happen because the procedure is on the right track. However, even Poles get lost in contacts with offices, let alone foreigners. People who understand partially Polish are probably in the worst situation, because they do not understand everything, and then guesswork and sometimes unnecessary worries begin.
***
We run various integration activities for people of all ages with help of the UpFoundation. We organize Polish language lessons at various levels and every week an American volunteer conducts art classes for children and adults in English. A psychologist from Ukraine, who is on duty with us from time to time has a queue of people in need of help.
We do not have the power to solve everything or to end the war in Ukraine, but we are trying our best to at least help our new neighbors in any way.
09.12.2022
