My Charity Work
Rising beyond roots, reaching for dreams
I was born in a small town in Eastern Poland and I feel a great kinship with children from rural, underprivileged backgrounds. Their path is often harder as they do not have as many opportunities, resources, inspiration and role models as children in big cities.
Therefore, together with a group of friends (in particular Krzysztof Darmetko and Katarzyna Rozenfeld) in 2005 we decided to do something about it and founded a charity called Effectus Papilionis Foundation which means “the Butterfly Effect Foundation” in Latin. The charity started by teaching high-quality, free English language courses to the children in Mazury, one of the poorest regions of Poland. Very quickly we realized that English itself is not enough, and we added scholarships for the most underserved of our students. Finally, on top of it we added “Motivational Weekends”.
Weekend of inspiration, lifelong impact!
Motivational Weekends allow us to meet our scholars in person, where we take them to Warsaw for 3 days. They sleep in our patron’s houses, where they see highly functional families with good role models, humor, hard work and generosity. We fill their days with useful courses such as fast-reading and memorization techniques. Then on Saturday we will typically have a motivational session, where we invite people from small towns and villages who made great career in Warsaw showing them “hey, you see they made it, you can make it too!”.
Our speakers talk about their path from school to university and then to their career. They describe what various jobs are, how to get noticed by employers, how to steer one’s education to economic stability and fulfillment. During the rest of time we take our scholars for fun activities (e.g. bowling) and sight-seeing. Typically, our scholars are supercharged and incredibly motivated after the weekends. They feel they can move the mountains! The energy that is unleashed over the weekend translates into long-term impact of consistency in studying, greater effort and determination.
Throwing balls and raising funds!
After years of trying, we have found a sustainable way of funding our activities. We organize an annual…dodgeball tournament for the private equity industry! We thought that the opportunity to throw a ball at each other, a very childish activity, will be liberating, silly and fun for this rather serious and official industry. And it worked! Men and women who normally wear dark suits to work every day, put on t-shirt and shorts and get to experience being children again. The best part is that it helps real children in the process!
I have served as a Founder and President of the organization since inception. I feel that it will soon be time to pass the baton to the next generation, ideally the scholars themselves, who are now often established and prosperous adults. In this way, we will go full circle and create an organization which will start supporting and rejuvenating itself!
Rising beyond roots, reaching for dreams
I was born in a small town in Eastern Poland and I feel a great kinship with children from rural, underprivileged backgrounds. Their path is often harder as they do not have as many opportunities, resources, inspiration and role models as children in big cities.
Therefore, together with a group of friends (in particular Krzysztof Darmetko and Katarzyna Rozenfeld) in 2005 we decided to do something about it and founded a charity called Effectus Papilionis Foundation which means “the Butterfly Effect Foundation” in Latin. The charity started by teaching high-quality, free English language courses to the children in Mazury, one of the poorest regions of Poland. Very quickly we realized that English itself is not enough, and we added scholarships for the most underserved of our students. Finally, on top of it we added “Motivational Weekends”.
Weekend of inspiration, lifelong impact!
Motivational Weekends allow us to meet our scholars in person, where we take them to Warsaw for 3 days. They sleep in our patron’s houses, where they see highly functional families with good role models, humor, hard work and generosity. We fill their days with useful courses such as fast-reading and memorization techniques. Then on Saturday we will typically have a motivational session, where we invite people from small towns and villages who made great career in Warsaw showing them “hey, you see they made it, you can make it too!”.
Our speakers talk about their path from school to university and then to their career. They describe what various jobs are, how to get noticed by employers, how to steer one’s education to economic stability and fulfillment. During the rest of time we take our scholars for fun activities (e.g. bowling) and sight-seeing. Typically, our scholars are supercharged and incredibly motivated after the weekends. They feel they can move the mountains! The energy that is unleashed over the weekend translates into long-term impact of consistency in studying, greater effort and determination.
Throwing balls and raising funds!
After years of trying, we have found a sustainable way of funding our activities. We organize an annual…dodgeball tournament for the private equity industry! We thought that the opportunity to throw a ball at each other, a very childish activity, will be liberating, silly and fun for this rather serious and official industry. And it worked! Men and women who normally wear dark suits to work every day, put on t-shirt and shorts and get to experience being children again. The best part is that it helps real children in the process!
I have served as a Founder and President of the organization since inception. I feel that it will soon be time to pass the baton to the next generation, ideally the scholars themselves, who are now often established and prosperous adults. In this way, we will go full circle and create an organization which will start supporting and rejuvenating itself!
