To be precise, it has not fully settled. One of families under my care stills awaits a sofa bed (delivery delayed), another one I have looked after waits for bedside lamps and a chair assembly which I will do myself. Four families' donators have buggered up and we (volunteers from Ursynów area) will need to fix up money from an "emergency fund" to meet their needs. Yesterday I belatedly purchased and delivered a shower booth for a family I picked up as a donator on 8 December. Well, the Yuletide celebration has not yet commenced.
My sixth edition is the first one when I am not in a relationship. The other person close to me used to be a counterbalance and kept by involvement at bay. This year I had decided to dedicate more energy to Szlachetna Paczka and now feel drained of it, yet not on account if my relationship status, but due to organisational errors made all along.
The recruitment process has been screwed up. Far too many people on managerial positions and as rank-and-file volunteers should have never found themselves in their roles. The absence of black lists (of people with negative feedback from previous editions) has definitely contributed to this.
In the very area of Ursynów we onboarded 64 families to receive aid (vs. previous record of 54) and had around 35 volunteers (10 more than in previous years on average). Quantity of staff has not translated into quality. Although we have had some outstanding newcomers, the number of insufficiently involved (or disappearing along the way) volunteers was appallingly high. Needless to say duties they had undertaken had to be taken over.
In the run-up to the final weekend there has been a massive problem of families not picked by any donators. Volumes could be spoken of reasons why it happened like this, but since there is no proof any of my theories is right, I will keep them for myself. In social media the most common notion was putting it down to some families' sky-high needs, which even if justified, are hard to be fulfilled by ordinary people (may a costly leaking roof repair serve as an example).
No reliable statistics will show how many Paczkas (neither "box" nor "parcel" renders well what a Paczka in Szlachetna context is) have eventually been prepared by the volunteers and their companions. In Ursynów area 4 out of 64 families have been picked by us. Additional time and money spent on saving families from being left out in the cold are the biggest cost hidden in joyful celebration of the recent edition.
I would hazard a guess Szlachetna Paczka is one of the most demanding forms of volunteering which can be taken up in Poland. It is not just about coping with horrific stories of o people's penury, but also about time dedicated to do it properly and having to arrange a lot on one's, frequently making extensive use of one's multiple resources.
I believe past this edition Szlachetna Paczka's relationship with donators and volunteers will be under strain and lots of effort will have to be put to rebuild them.
Will Stowarzyszenie Wiosna face criticism it ought receive? Each year it seems those in charge of the initiative are learning from mistakes made in a previous years. But once a new edition kicks off for good, it turns out history repeats itself, but the price paid by the most responsible volunteers goes up.
