Szlachetna Paczka: More Than Love
Polonia helping Polonia. We connect families in need with people who want to help wisely.
Fr. Jacek WIOSNA Stryczek, the founder of Szlachetna Paczka
The foundation of Szlachetna Paczka: mutual love
Loving is not the art. The art is to love in such a way that the one I love becomes an eagle.
– Fr. Jacek WIOSNA Stryczek
This is what mutual love is about: the one who has received help learns to give.
Help that takes away a person’s strength, agency and will to act is unwise help. That is why at Szlachetna Paczka we believe in help that awakens dignity, relationships and an impulse for change.
The most important thing in the world is mutual love – it gives meaning to relationships and changes people. From the very beginning, Szlachetna Paczka has been a process of learning how to help wisely: how to meet people experiencing poverty, listen to their stories and respond to their real needs.
Because poverty has many faces. And real help always begins with meeting the person.
Mutual love is an art
Not all help really helps people in poverty
The beginnings of Szlachetna Paczka taught us that help can both support a person and demoralize them.
In our first year we tested monthly packages for families in need. Very quickly, however, it turned out that regular help began to be treated as extra income.
One of the volunteers said:
“I bring the package, and even the teenagers can’t be bothered to get up to take it.”
That is when we understood that help which takes away a person’s strength and motivation to change can do more harm than good.
That is why at Szlachetna Paczka we learn to help wisely. It is not only about giving things, but about helping in a way that awakens dignity, relationships and the will to live.
Because love that gives wings does not fly for a person. It awakens in them the conviction that they have wings.
What real poverty is
We learned that we have to look for real poverty.
Because there are people who have learned to display their shortcomings in order to make money from them. This, too, can become a kind of business.
Real poverty very often looks different. A truly poor person often does not even know how to ask for help. They don’t know how to do it.
That is why at Szlachetna Paczka the most important things are meeting, talking and getting to know the person’s real story.
Not every request means a real need
I remember (Fr. Jacek) an experiment by one of my medical students. On Grodzka Street in Kraków he covered himself with a rag and pretended to be a beggar. In two hours he collected about two hundred złoty.
It showed us that some people have learned very well how to arouse compassion.
If after a few seconds of conversation we feel an immediate urge to help, sometimes we may be dealing with someone who has learned to ask professionally.
That is why real help requires wisdom, attentiveness and getting to know the person.
Real poverty often comes suddenly
A serious illness, a child’s illness, losing a job or a lonely old age – these are situations that can suddenly shatter an entire life.
Medical costs rise, one has to give up work, helplessness and fear appear.
And it is precisely these people who find it hardest to ask for help.
Poverty is a cage
People in need often live as if in a cage. This life troubles them, but at the same time it has become familiar. That is the paradox of poverty: it, too, can become a comfort zone.
When a volunteer and a donor appear, it is as if someone opened that cage and said: come out, you can fly.
Not everyone has the strength to return fully to life right away. But everyone can give something of themselves. That is why we give an impulse for change – so that a person who felt like a lost chicken discovers that there is an eagle inside them.
No one can fly for another person. You can only awaken their heart, so that they discover for themselves that they have wings.
Helping wisely
One of the important goals of Szlachetna Paczka is that help must not demoralize.
It is not only about sending money, but about building relationships, responsibility and mutual love.
Because every person has the right to a normal life – but real help should give strength, not create dependence.
Szlachetna Paczka teaches the art of living
You look for poverty, you learn and you step out of your comfort zone. You go where you normally would not be, because people often run away from the poor – they are afraid that the poor will want something from them.
Here it is the other way around. You go to the person in need.
You have to be both assertive and empathetic. You have to understand poverty, but at the same time be able to set boundaries, because when someone is in need, they may expect a great deal.
And that is exactly why Szlachetna Paczka is above all about building relationships and getting to know the person.
Diagnosing poverty and an impulse for change
Getting to know a person and listening to them is very important. Once we find a person in need, the next step is to diagnose this poverty and see what we can really do.
Szlachetna Paczka of course helps materially, but above all it is meant to be an impulse for change.
The material value of the package undoubtedly brings relief to a family or a person in need, but at the same time it is meant to be something more – an impulse that gives a person strength, hope and a sense of dignity.
That is why you have to know how to listen.
I remember (Fr. Jacek) such stories from Kraków.
There was a married couple with children – very poor people, practically on the edge of destitution, but at the same time very well-kept. The volunteer asked them:
“What is your dream?”
They answered that they dreamed of wedding rings, because they had gotten married but had never been able to afford them. A donor gave them wedding rings.
Another time a woman said:
“My old man has nothing to wear. Look at him…”
A donor bought this man a suit. Suddenly he became elegant.
An elderly lady received a bathrobe and said:
“Now I look like a real woman.”
Another elderly woman received a coat and said:
“Now I go to church like a Parisian lady.”
These are exactly such impulses for change.
A package works like medicine
In the past, people used to say about someone with depression: he has a sick soul, he has to suffer and work on himself. Today the first thing he gets is medicine – because it is not his fault that something inside him has become unbalanced. The medicine gives a kick, and then the person can work on his own life.
Szlachetna Paczka works in a similar way. We don’t say: pull yourself together and help yourself. We give an impulse that changes above all the mind – and then also life.
Sometimes this impulse is something that looks like a small thing from the outside. I remember (Fr. Jacek) a mother of three who, when asked what she needed, answered: “Actually, nothing.” After a moment she added: “I would like a new jacket for my son. He was mocked so much at school that I had to move him to another one.”
Children can be ruthless. That is why sometimes you have to give a child something really good – not as a luxury, but so that they can live normally among their peers.
Targeted and concrete help
If poverty is well diagnosed, you can really invest a lot and help effectively.
By getting to know a family’s needs, you can organize very concrete help for a given person. Sometimes it is medical help, sometimes something can be renovated. Another time you can arrange used household appliances or other things that really improve someone’s situation.
You can do many different things – what matters is that the help is on target.
Sometimes a person is so buried in problems – health or legal – that they cannot help themselves. Then the most valuable thing is someone who calmly analyzes the situation: a doctor, a lawyer, a kind specialist. That, too, is Szlachetna Paczka.
Volunteering also teaches you to step out of your own world and to be empathetic and assertive at the same time. It also teaches listening and accepting that people live differently.
Because the world of well-off people is not the only world that exists.
