CHRISTMAS CHARITY WORK IN POLAND...

Can anyone give me some advice on doing something usefull at Christmas...?

My Christmas is a non event really , its put on hold untill next year when i will be in Moscow with my lady , so i am wondering if i can do something usefull to help some organisation give a nice Christmas to others...

Pehaps there is some people who take food to the homeless , or presents to childrens homes , or clear paths at old folks homes , all ideas welcome....

I suppose a local church may be doing something like this , i don,t mind helping there , as long as they accept i have no interest in religion...

Any ideas....???

Gazeta Wyborcza organizes action which is called "Everyone can be a Santa" when you can give something or do something for poor families. You can give the money which is the easiest way but you can also repair the roof, buy some coal etc. For example my friend with some other people took two sisters for all day shopping to shopping centre.

But I think it's a little bit too late for that because Christmas Eve it's on Friday.
I don't know where do you live but in every big city in Poland there's a Christmas Eve for homeless and maybe you could help with that.

However You have something about 48 hours to do something good :)

The way it works in PL, the church collects the letters that are sent to santa, by children from orphanages and lower income families, then they distribute them amongst the church community or anyone that wants to be involved, you buy the wish list and take the parcel back to the church, then they deliver to the families/children directly.

As it is so late in the game, the only idea I can come up with is to contact the local orphanages in your area and be the English Santa for the day traveling around and giving out sweets or small prezzies.

Thats an idea..the kids home i used to bring lots of stuff for probably could find me something usefull to do....

Its a while since i saw them....i will go and see what i can do...

Contact your local parish and ask if the charity Caritas has a branch there. They are very active in acts of mercy round this time of year. You can also invite a lonely neighbour or homeless individual to fill that empty palce at your Wigilia table.

you should find some people who are willing to join you to collect the Charity for Xmas .. i wish u all the best for this good work .. God will bless u :)

Well, your heart,s in the right place, so I sincerely wish someone returns your goodwill someday.
All the best for xmas and the coming new year.

Please do tell Wildrover, what did you get up this Christmas?

What did i get up...? maybe you mean what did i get up to...???

Well , i went to the kids home , helped dish out some pressies , dragged em round the lake in a sledge pulled by my Jeep , then showed some of the older ones how to do ice fishing....

helped some of the teachers with their English , then pulled a bunch of stuck cars out of the snow....
then i went home...

Well you have more snow than us in Warsaw, its just about all gone.

Up to - correct

Its about five feet deep in places on my farm , and its still snowing...

In places? The ones you fell into, my friend? ;) ;)

The deep bits are the ones i have not driven the Jeep over , i don,t bother clearing the snow any more , i just drive over it and make some sort of path through it...

But there are parts where its drifted that even the Jeep would not get through..

I dare you to go to your neighbours and supply them with a few spades and point across to what needs to be done ;)

Ha...if i turned up at my neighbours with a spade , they would probably point at their piles of snow...

You would not get any of the locals shovelling snow , unless some cash changed hands....

Time to whip out the groszy? ;) How about the charity slant, would that work? ;) From what I can glean, the Poles tend to be far less charitable than the Scots. Whoops ;)

Rumour has it that they will only give after checking out the charity's validity/authorisation code for 10 hours at the local city hall :)

I have not tried collecting for charity in Poland , but i reckon the Poles would give stuff , especially if it was for kids...

When i was in the UK , it was always easy to get toys and stuff for kids , getting money was always a problem , but i could get truckloads of cuddly toys , clothes , computers , books , bycycles and whatever....

The hardest part was getting it all to Polska , at first we did it in convoys of Landrovers , but eventually it grew too big to do it this way , and we managed to talk a Polish trucking company in Szczecin to bring it all to Poland for us... They took onions to the UK , but came back empty...

I will probably get back into all this sort of stuff once i move to Russia , but right now i have enough problem taking care of myself...

You know what they say, charity begins at home.

Don't worry, wildie, you can make a New Years Resolution to upgrade to Heinz Beans after eating Tesco Value for so long. Nothing like good student food :)

My girlfriend has stopped asking me what sort of stuff i eat in Poland , i know she is not happy about my basic diet , and i am sure she is gonna overfeed me when i get over there...

I am still going to eat beans though....sometimes...

I'm sure she'll reward your charitable spirit in full when there :) I too would like to give to animals and the blind. I've maintained that they are the 2 charities that stand out the most as being worthy. I know how hard it is, wildie, your employer will not think twice about cutting your salary while inflation/taxes soar. I am hardly in a position to give but I'd like to.

I always fancied the idea of running a wildlife rescue centre....maybe it will be possible once we get our house in the country...?

If you set your heart on it, I can see it becoming a reality. You'd just have to assess the demand/viability in your area but I hope it will be a goer. Helping is what comes naturally to you or I and I wish more people would become that way.

We will be living somewhere between Moscow and St Petersburg , out in the forest , so there will be plenty of wildlife around...

I am hoping that i can make enough money to finance it myself by running tours on Harley and 4 x 4 stuff to the interesting parts of Russia...

Don,t forget you will be welcome to come and stay with us if you find yourself over that part of the world...!

We plan on keeping an appartment in Moscow , another in St Petersburg , and the house will be somewhere between the two...

3 places, wow. That's quite a feat! There is some charity work to be done here :)

Ha.... my sister finds it quite funny...!

When i asked her when she will visit me in Poland , she always used to say..I will visit when you have an inside toilet...!

She is rather amused that i may soon have a choice of three toilets , and says i won,t know which one to pss in first...!

Actually we will have four places , as Ksu wants to have another flat in Moscow that she can rent out....

WR - take a look at this. unclepasha.com

Might give you some ideas :)

Brilliant stuff....i shall be borrowing a few ideas there i think....?

You can go to hospice or maybe to hospital to visit elderly people who probably miss their families and friends.
A wonderful idea, Wildrover.
Maybe after Christmas you will also find time to be with people who suffer very much.
Sometimes many just need a hand who somebody with a kind heart will hold for a moment or two.
I've been thinking about hospice from time to time. It's inviting for me. My parish organizes help for the place. The door for people who wish to help are opened all the time there.

Well, I have to say I look up to people like You. I realize then that actually there is no time to think if I really want to do something for others.

I hope I will go there as soon as my time will allow me.
:)

Merged: Polish spirit = Christian spirit

Great to see that in Poland we can still get together in such huge numbers and donate to charity, this lifts the atmosphere of Christmas, wherever I went I saw some charitable activities happening in the open or behind closed doors.