We Will Never Give Up

Renata Bem, deputy director general of UNICEF Poland, talks to the Voice.

UNICEF has been active in Poland since 1962, but its origins date back to 1946; please tell us about the history of the organization in Poland.

Still not many people know that the originator of UNICEF was a Pole, Dr. Ludwik Rajchman, a physician-bacteriologist, who in 1946 at the UN General Assembly proposed the creation of a completely apolitical organization that would help children around the world. UNICEF has been active in Poland since 1962, when the first UNICEF National Committee in Eastern Europe was established. For the next 40 years UNICEF financed programs to help children in Poland, bought equipment for health centers and imported raw materials to produce items for children. During martial law [1981] UNICEF National Committees from Western European countries provided Polish children with medicines, clothing and food, which were in short supply at the time.

In 2002 Poland was recognized as a highly developed country and thus UNICEF’s role changed. Since then we have been collecting money to help children in the poorest countries, including those affected by armed conflicts or natural disasters. I think it’s very fair: those who are better off should help those who can’t or don’t know how to help themselves. Of course, this help must be prudent, well thought-out and systemic. In its more than 75 years of working for children around the world, UNICEF has developed extremely effective and repeatedly tested aid mechanisms that do no harm, but give a chance and hope for the future.

What are the most important directions of UNICEF Poland’s activities today and the most important plans for the coming years?

Although our organization’s main task is to raise funds to help the most needy children in the world, we do not forget about the youngest in Poland. We have been consistently implementing educational and social-educational projects in Polish schools for many years. We try to show the young generation of Poles the situation of their peers in the world, and thus sensitize them to harm in the broad sense of the word and shape pro-social attitudes. By inviting children and young people to our projects, we encourage them to get actively involved in activities that enable them to make real changes in their local communities and at the same time teach them respect and tolerance for excluded or less privileged groups.

In the coming years we want to focus on engaging the business world in our relief efforts. Companies can already get involved in helping children around the world through programs such as “Friend of UNICEF” or “Company with a Heart.” These are proposals for small and medium-sized enterprises. We invite large corporations to jointly build partnerships that allow a company to engage employees, carry out activities in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility, but also focus on areas of assistance that the company can identify with, e.g. due to the profile of its business. Funds obtained in cooperation with business partners allow us to plan and implement assistance activities on a much larger scale.

Developed countries are facing another wave of the migration crisis, associated with events in the Middle East countries, Afghanistan and many other points of our globe; obviously, the victims of this crisis are mainly the most vulnerable people: women and children. How does UNICEF intend to respond to this situation?

It is true that the biggest victims of the migration crisis are the youngest and weakest, which are most often women and children. Every day, tens of thousands of families are exposed to danger, and hundreds of thousands more are ready to risk everything they have in search of a semblance of safety. We must protect these children from all kinds of abuse by those who want to take advantage of their dire situation. Today UNICEF operates in more than 190 countries. Our staff are on the ground in times of peace and relative stability, as well as in times of civil unrest, armed conflict, crisis or natural disasters. No matter how difficult the situation or how dangerous the conditions, we do not give up and we never will. This is also the case now in Afghanistan, where our employees have been present for more than 65 years and are doing their best to stay there and bring help to Afghan women and children at this difficult time. We do our best to provide them with safe shelter, food, clean water, but also psychological support, so important

The activities of organizations such as UNICEF Poland largely depend on the ability to attract sponsors to finance charity campaigns; what kind of partners are the most important in Poland, which ones are being approached with the hope of attracting them?

Contrary to a rather common belief, UNICEF is not funded by the UN. This means that all our aid activities are carried out thanks to the support of individual and corporate donors. In recent years Polish donors have contributed several dozen million zlotys to projects run by UNICEF to help children in such places as the Horn of Africa, Sierra Leone, Angola, Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan and Nepal. Thanks to their support, thousands of children could be saved.

As I have already mentioned, apart from numerous activities and appeals for support addressed to individual donors, we are currently focusing on engaging business partners in our campaigns. We talk to representatives of many industries and companies in Poland, encouraging them to provide assistance together with UNICEF. We show that business has enormous power to initiate change, according to the principle that “big means more effective.” It is worth emphasizing that an NGO is a natural ally of companies undertaking activities benefiting the community. On the other hand, with capital at its disposal, business can contribute to a real fight against social problems in the world and support positive systemic changes. Partnership with UNICEF gives companies the opportunity to save the youngest while achieving their own business objectives. The global reach of our organization, its recognizability and credibility allow companies to move to a new level of external communication, i.e. reach thousands of our individual donors with their message, improve business results, build their brand and improve its image, and also unite and engage employees. Together we bring real help.

Every charity organization tries to recruit its “ambassadors” from among famous public figures in a given country: artists, athletes, even celebrities; who are the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors in Poland?

UNICEF is the originator of the idea of celebrities from the worlds of culture, entertainment or sports supporting charitable activities. We were the first organization in the world to invite celebrities to support children’s causes, back in the 1950s. UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors use their talent and fame to fight for the rights of the youngest and support UNICEF’s mission. Everyone knows that opinions and appeals coming from famous and well-liked people reach public awareness more easily.

So far, Goodwill Ambassadors have included such famous personalities as Sir Roger Moore, Audrey Hepburn, Orlando Bloom and David Beckham.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors in Poland include actors Małgorzata Foremniak, Artur Żmijewski and Magdalena Różczka, singer Majka Jeżowska, athletes Robert Lewandowski, Robert Korzeniowski and Agnieszka Radwańska, and presenter Łukasz Nowicki. It is worth emphasizing that the Ambassadors always work pro bono, which means that they are never paid for the support they give us; none of our Ambassadors nor any of the recognizable people who are great friends of UNICEF Poland have ever received a single zloty for the time and effort they put into promoting our mission. I am extremely grateful to these very busy and overworked people for always answering our calls and, never hesitating for a second, doing everything, bending their busy schedules, shifting professional and private commitments in order to help us reach as many donors as possible.

What difficulties, organizational, political or other, does UNICEF Poland face?

I think that like other NGOs in Poland, we struggle mainly with vague and often unclear legal and tax regulations that apply to our activities here. Unfortunately the current legal and tax system raises many doubts as to how particular areas of associations’ or foundations’ activities are treated. For us, as an organization operating internationally, it is particularly difficult: we have double reporting systems, i.e. in Poland and to our headquarters in New York. Often reconciling the data between these reports is a real ordeal.

Like many other aid organizations in Poland, we also struggle with high staff turnover. Among other things, this is due to our inability to pay employees what business in a broad sense can offer. We do our best to appreciate our employees’ commitment, knowledge and experience, but at the same time we are obliged to watch every single zloty we spend. However, we do everything to make sure that our employees receive decent salaries for the difficult work they do. In this context, I am very pleased that we at UNICEF Poland have managed to build a committed and efficient team which successfully implements increasingly complex and wide-ranging projects. There is still a lot of work ahead of us, but I am convinced that we are heading in the right direction: we are strengthening the management team by hiring experienced professionals and recruiting new team members with experience in the sector.

Picture: Renata Bem, deputy director general of UNICEF Poland