Annual Report 2019-2020

The Rotary year 2019-2020 of our club was characterized in the first part by our two very successful main projects, namely the sponsor run at/with the Willy-Brandt-School (WBS) and our second charitable concert.

In the second part of the Rotary year, the COVID-19 crisis led to us being unable to meet in person for almost four months. However, our club continued to thrive through electronic club meetings, to the point where we were even more numerous than usual and could regularly involve our members from abroad. Unfortunately, our club trip and some planned projects, particularly in the German-Polish Gardens, had to be canceled.

In July/August, we continued to meet informally at the "Elephant," as in previous years, despite the summer break – usually with a pleasantly high number of participants.

Once, however, there was just one person alone...!

From September onwards, we were able to regularly welcome interesting speakers at our lunch meetings, and we managed to maintain this format electronically during the period of COVID-19-related restrictions.

The club leadership was represented by the following board members:

• Joachim Franke – President

• Max Bielecki – Secretary

• Roland Sprung – Treasurer

• Alexander Heinelt – Vice President / Clubmaster

• Małgorzata Grudzińska

• Oliver Burrak

• Piotr Franciszkowski

• Arda Yurdatapan

• Dariusz Bujniewicz – Past President.

Even before the start of the term, a very special event took place "right at our doorstep" with the RI Convention in Hamburg (01 – 05.06.2019), in which our honorary member Andrzej Ludek, as well as the two future presidents, Joachim Franke and Alexander Heinelt, participated.

On September 19, 2019, we organized, together with the students of WBS, the second sponsor run for the fight against polio, a successful main program of Rotary International and the Bill Gates Foundation, which matched our donations. Thanks to this Rotary initiative, this disease has been almost eradicated worldwide (except for Afghanistan and Pakistan). The sponsor run raised nearly 20,000 PLN, of which 8,000 PLN was used by the students for a local charitable cause, and our club was able to transfer 12,000 PLN to the Rotary International Foundation! 

This was the highest contribution in our Rotary district this year, for which our Rotary Club was honored. Here, Past President Dariusz Bujniewicz and Past Governor Lukas Grochowski are pictured during the presentation of the honorary certificate. 

Our first meeting in the form of "Kamingespräche" (fireside chats) took place on December 4th at Frederik and Joachim's. These are a well-established Rotary tradition, where members meet informally in small groups – preferably in a private setting – in the evening to get to know each other better and/or to discuss specific topics.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 restrictions prevented a repeat of this event in the second half of the year.

In early December, we, together with ROTARACT Warszawa CHOPIN, distributed gifts to the remaining veterans of the Warsaw Uprising. Here we are pictured with Paweł Śliwka, whose president we were with. 

The highlight of the Rotary year 2019-2020 was clearly our second charitable concert on January 24, 2020, held at the Dom Kultury Świt, where we asked for donations for "children threatened by exclusion." With the Grupa MoCarta, the famous Polish mime Ireneusz Krosny, and the opening act by the group Beyond Relief (with "our" Sara Lobnig), we were able to delight our German-Polish-speaking audience without words, only with music and gestures. We were supported, among others, by ROTARACT CHOPIN and our partner club Berlin Mickiewicz. 

During this event, we were able to collect donations amounting to nearly 38,000 PLN, which gave us the opportunity to engage socially in our charity projects. However, due to COVID-19, we redirected more than half of the donations to help in the fight against the coronavirus.

On February 19, 2020, we were visited by our district governor, Mrs. Małgorzata Wojtas.

On March 5th, there was a lecture on the current German-Polish relations by Mr. Abraham, the Deputy German Ambassador.

Then the coronavirus struck, along with the associated restrictions. From March 15th until the end of the Rotary year, we were no longer able to meet in person. However, club life continued. After a short period, we started holding our meetings at the usual time in the form of video conferences, often featuring interesting lectures.

In the meantime, we tested four different systems. A nice side effect was that we frequently had more participants at the meetings than before, including our international members.

For the first time, we met in large numbers again on June 28, 2020, at the German-Polish Gardens for the handover of the club presidency from Joachim Franke to Alexander Heinelt. Along with the traditional club chain, a football signed by Lukas Podolski from his project "ARKA/Arche" (a place for learning for disadvantaged children in the Praga district) was presented as the first prize of the auction at the next charitable concert. On this occasion, we were also finally able to hand over the "Rotary" bench to the Praga-South district.

It was a wonderful feeling to be able to reconnect with each other after such a long time at a reception in the neighboring DEDERICH hotel.

We and the German-Polish Gardens

Throughout the year, the German-Polish Gardens accompanied us, for which we had taken on a symbolic patronage the previous year. In addition to providing information and promoting the gardens at various events (summer festival, volunteer activities, Warsaw city run, German-Polish Rotary Country Committee, etc.), we were also able to successfully collect donations from our Rotary friends for a stable swing and a bench. With donations from the RC Mickiewicz, RC Mettmann, RC Zitadelle, ICC Germany-Poland, and our friend Fried Nielsen as the "father" of the gardens, we are now well visible there. This project by Kamionek Lake in the Praga district has made great progress and is more than worth a visit.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, however, we unfortunately had to cancel our planned environmental action in the German-Polish Gardens.

Who did we support in the Rotary year 2019/2020?

In the true spirit of Rotary, we quickly recognized how important it was to get involved in the fight against the coronavirus. We made the decision to repurpose a large part of the donations from our concert, which had originally been intended for children threatened by exclusion.

Specifically, in the fight against COVID-19, we took the following actions:
For 22,000 PLN, we purchased an oxygen therapy device set and donated it to the Warsaw MSWiA hospital. This was part of a district initiative in Poland, where a total of 15 such devices were procured for Poland, with an overall value of more than a third of a million PLN.

We transferred 1,000 PLN for 100,000 masks for hospital staff and emergency services to the 3D Printer initiative of RC Żoliborz.

• Support for the "Verein der Kinderfreunde Praga Süd" with didactic teaching materials and gardening tools.

• In Szczecin, we sponsored a prize for the Karl Löwe Singing Competition at the Szczecin Academy of Art, which was presented by Past President Darek Bujniewicz during the ceremonial closing event.

• MotoMikołajki for orphaned children.

Additionally, we financially supported two scholarship holders at VIADRINA (together with RC Berlin Mickiewicz) and at TU Berlin (together with RC Mettmann), as well as the work of Nigdy Więcej as a peacebuilding project in the fight against racism.

The membership growth is also very positive. With four new members (Christian Braunschweig – returned, Mariusz Majkut, Göktürk Iplikcioglu, and Lars Gutheil), we are on the right track. With 33 members, we are already the largest Rotary Club in Warsaw, even though some members can only participate electronically due to relocations. 

The collaboration with our partner club RC Mickiewicz from Berlin is thriving. We have joint projects (scholarships, the DE-PL Gardens, and soon a cross-border children's home project). Additionally, RC Mickiewicz provided strong support for our concert. I regularly exchanged ideas and met with their president, Krzysztof Michniewicz, as well as with several of our members.

A big thank you once again to everyone who supported me so actively.
Joachim Franke, Past President