Dear ZPI Friends
Today 1 year passes since the Russian full-scale invasion on Ukraine.
As many of you know already on February 27, the first transport of medical supplies collected by our Foundation, Sangha Kanzeon, Blyzkist collective and many friends set off from Warsaw, Poland. Thanks to Your amazing help, hearts, and support from the beginning of March to this day we have managed to send aid to Ukraine worth over PLN 800,000; a total of 18 transports to Ukrainian hospitals with medical equipment, medicines, and equipment for rapid surgery needed to save lives; the rest came to us directly in the form of in-kind donations.
Thanks to the huge commitment of the Foundation’s members and friends from Poland and abroad, we also co-organized transport of 4 trucks with medical and other equipment, which went to Modlin and from there to hospitals and other people in need, including the assistance in the transport of medicines and food for diabetics.
We are currently assisting in the purchase of materials and raw materials to produce life-saving equipment, which is being manufactured in Ukraine as well as purchasing an aggregate in the phase of winter and electrical crises.
We act in consultation with volunteers of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine, who, on behalf of specific hospitals, update lists of needs for medicines and medical equipment necessary to save lives. We are also in contact with non-governmental organizations on the Ukrainian side (e.g., Carpathian Initiative), thanks to which things go to the neediest. So far, we have organized the largest help for the hospital in Chernivtsi, Kiev, Odessa.
We are working on:
1. Raising funds needed to purchase medicines.
2. Sorting, packing and describing what is in the parcels sent (according to the list of needs).
3. Organization of safe transport across the border.
Each time after the transport is delivered, we receive a confirmation of receipt of the goods, which guarantees that the medicines and medical equipment go directly to those in need.
Since our last zoom meeting in December
We have sent 2 transports (28 January, 18 February) of medicine, medical equipment, rapid surgery equipment, thermal underwear, winter clothes, food as well as equipment to help in energy crises. Help worth 29 thousand dollars. We are currently organizing the transfer and transport of an aggregate that will allow us to insulate the surface of the entire institution.
In the name of our Ukrainian friends, our helping collective we would like to express our huge gratitude for making all this possible. Without your hearts, support, and involvement, all this wouldn’t happen.
One Heart.
With biggest gratitude and bow, with best wishes of peace and love,
Orina & “Be” Foundation
Małgosia Braunek’s “Be” Foundation
The Foundation works on many levels, we work very intensively. For years, we have been promoting a holistic approach to health and integrative medicine both in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. We focus on comprehensive, conscious health building. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we have been continuously helping people fleeing from it, finding shelter in Poland, and organizing aid transports to hospitals in Ukraine.
Help in the face of war
The “Be” Foundation, together with the Ukrainian Blyzkist collective, Sangha Kanzeon, with the support of many friends, from the outbreak of the war in Ukraine to this day, has been actively collecting funds for the purchase of medicines and medical supplies for hospitals in Ukraine as well as help people fleeing the war developing programs dedicated to helping refugees.
Programs for refugees
In the building of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw at ul. Pańska 3, al- ready in the first days of the war, we created a help center. For the first three weeks of the war, every day, together with many volunteers, we made about 2,000 sandwiches a day, which were delivered to Warsaw railway stations. Sandwiches were dedicated to people fleeing the war. During the action, a common room for children was created spontaneously. Refugee mothers who helped make sandwiches began to come with children who found a safe space at our help point.
Today, we operate in Warsaw, developing a program dedicated to integration and assistance to those in need in Poland. Taking advantage of the hospitality of “Open Jazdów”, the Chechen collective “Nomadic Woman” and their kitchen as well as the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, from June until now (February 2023) we regularly meet with the program “Bądźmy Blisko I Будьм близько” and Cook, eat, explore! Gotuy, їж, знайо!
This project is co-created by our Foundation and the Ukrainian collective Blyzkist. As part of it, we offer:
Once a week we hold a “Bądźmy Blisko I Будьм близько” program – free classes of stress reduction, creative and movement activities (breath and basics of yoga) and art therapy for refugee children from 3 to 12 years old from Ukraine (with a Ukrainian language interpreter) and other parts of the world as well as from Poland. From June to the end of December 2022, a total of 600 children benefited from the classes.
Free online psychological consultations in Ukrainian were held regularly until September 2022. We conducted ongoing therapy for about 12 people.
Another pillar of our activities is integrative, cyclical cooking – Cook, eat, explore! Gotuy, їж, знайо!. Each time around 20-70 people come to the workshop. During the meetings with refugees and migrants, we will prepare dishes from different parts of the world.
Everyone is welcome, we invite people with friends from Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and around the world to meet at a common table, cook, eat, get to know each other, talk, and exchange experiences. The meals we prepare are donated to refugees or people in the homeless crisis.
Plans
Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine continues. Both on-site humanitarian aid and that directed to refugees residing in Poland are very much needed.
We continue and develop the program for children “Let’s be close and Будьм близько”, a kitchen program – Cook, Eat, Explore! Gotuy, їж, знайо! and psychological help. We focus on intercultural integration with health education in the background. The condition for participation is mutual respect, tolerance, and willingness to coexist without pressure, and in an atmosphere of trust. Getting to know different cultures through joint activities for children and the idea of culinary workshops gives a signal that all people living in Poland have the same rights.
In our permanent, statutory work, we focus on a holistic approach to health – we do not focus on a quick solution – we look at the cause of the problem and believe that working on yourself on many levels systematically, in small steps helps to achieve lasting changes in health (including: mind spirit, body). This assumption also includes health at the social level.
There are many types of activities in our foundation statute, but all of them boil down to supporting the life and health of those in need. One of the basic assumptions is to act for charity. We have mobilized all our resources to respond to the war-related humanitarian crisis. We feel that we have a huge responsibility. We can’t imagine leaving someone in need. We are aware that the crisis will continue, and activities must be properly planned and organized.
Orina Krajewska
orina.krajewska@fundacjabadz.pl
+48503139942
