 During one of the training sessions that took place three weeks before last Christmas we were taking about importance of HPI cornerstones for our project development. Our discussion concentrated on â??sharing and caringâ? and resulted in a spontaneous proposal to do something good for others. The idea was very nice, but we didnâ??t know want to do with the limited resources that we posses ourselves. Different proposals were considered, but we couldnâ??t reach consensus on what and how we could do. Finally, the leader of our group told us that during Project Holders Meetings that he participated last year he met a headmaster of the orphanage in Wola Galezowska that was also involved in HPI projects.
He told us stories of some kids cruelly treated in their family homes and finally abundant by their parents who would spend alone their Christmas time in the orphanage. All of the sudden our meeting room was filled with still silence. We were listening carefully to what our leader was sharing with us and our minds absorbed information with a special attention. When he finished we immediately came into conclusion that what we wanted to do was to prepare Christmas gifts for the children from the orphanage. This decision was undertaken without any hesitation and with such spontaneity and enthusiasm of all of the farmers that even veterinary surgeon, who was conducted the training for the farmers, decided to join this initiative.
 Short exchange of opinions on how to proceed with giftsâ?? preparation led to the agreement that the each of the family would prepare a gift of its choice and ability and would bring it to the project leader for delivery to the orphanage. Although it was strongly emphasized that the action was voluntary and nobody would know if the family couldnâ??t be pat of it, all of the participants of our project brought beautifully prepared parcels on the agreed day to the project leader. All of the gifts, including the ones from the group leader and veterinarian, were put into one big box prepared by the daughters of the project leader and sent to the orphanage of Wola Galezowska. The gifts were simple and consisted mainly of different kind of sweet, books, games, toys, educational aids, etc, but they were received with a great appreciation by the children.
Warm thank you letters sent by the residents of the orphanage to our group were read out loud by the leader during one of our meetings. They made us to undertake decision about continuation of our support to the orphanage. Most of our project participants live very modest lives themselves, but thanks to that cooperatively undertaken action we all realized that we also have something to share with others and that sharing gives us a lot of satisfaction. This is our story of how HPI can inspire simple people like us to break out routine way of thinking and to experience a lot of joy in turn.
Back |
