022 edition was my third one as a volunteer, but for the first time I have taken up the role of an area leader. Due to influx of refugees and rising costs of living (and actually quite decent management on local level) this year’s Paczka in Ursynów was a record-breaking one. Volunteers from the area visited 84 families and took on 53 of them.
The ending was particularly tough, since the large number of families in need was not matched by a supply of donators. First 40 families found their donators easily, then it went uphill. I had to use my business relationships to find some of the donators and eventually my volunteers ended up compiling gift packages for 2 families from money collected at my girlfriend’s and mine workplaces.
In the run-up to the final weekend and during it, everything ran like a clockwork. Credits for this should go to my volunteers, carefully recruited and with a bunch of core experienced volunteers to whom I could delegate some of my responsibilities.
As the area leader I was closer to the structures of Stowarzyszenie Wiosna, which runs Szlachetna Paczka. Its backstage workings are not as dire as in times when priest Jacek Stryczek was its CEO, but still, it works like a corporation worse than my employer. As a leader I had my KPIs, deadlines and targets and had superiors checking up on my area’s progress in meeting them.
A week past the culmination of the programme, the time to slow it down comes at last. Sadly, a lot of stuff to handle was put back until after the final weekend, so now I am catching up.
In January I will take part in workshops held in order to improve the course of the Paczka in the next edition. I wonder whether Stowarzyszenie Wiosna learns from its mistakes or even whether it actually admits them. I have found some practices distasteful, but still believe the mądra pomoc (wise aid) does much more harm than good. And being a charity volunteer is immensely addictive and somehow could not imagine spending last months of the year not participating in it.
Besides, by being in charge of 26 volunteers, I have had a chance to develop my nascent managerial skills. Being a leader is not as horrible as I used to imagine and being a manager in a corporation no longer looms as a nightmare to me.
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