Poland’s biggest charity fundraiser again breaks record on 30th anniversary

Poland’s biggest annual charity fundraiser has received its largest ever amount of donations, with over 136 million zloty (€30 million) raised at its finale yesterday. It is the 30th time that the event has been held, and the eighth year in a row that its fundraising record has been broken.

Some 120,000 volunteers for the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (WOŚP) in Poland and abroad braved inclement weather to collect money, much of which goes towards purchasing medical equipment for children’s hospitals.

The final total raised, to be announced in spring after all collections and auctions have been completed and counted, will be even higher. Last year it was almost 211 million zloty (€46 million).

Among the auctions still ongoing are Robert Lewandowski’s boots in which he scored a famous bicycle kick goal in the Champions League (with bidding currently at 39,500 zloty), an electric scooter signed by Donald Tusk (100,000 zloty), and a game of chess with Marcin Dorociński, who starred in Netflix hit The Queen’s Gambit (25,950 zloty).

Most of the money raised by WOŚP is used to support healthcare in Poland. This year’s event, with the slogan “See the light”, raised funds to improve standards of diagnostics and treatment of sight in children.

Several thousand patients are hospitalised in paediatric ophthalmology wards every year, many of them requiring surgery for which specialised equipment is needed, according to the charity’s website.

A total of 1,633 fundraising centres operated during the finale, including 90 outside Poland in different 29 countries. Cities to host fundraisers included New York, Tokyo, Ankara, Stockholm and Sydney.

“Once again you Poles have shown yourselves to be fantastic, lovely and wonderful people,” the event’s founder and frontman Jerzy Owsiak told TVN24. “Who won today? We Poles won. For the 30th time the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity won.”

Owsiak cited “two incredible auctions” of gold keepsakes – a telephone card and a heart – which raised 600,000 and 777,777 zloty respectively at the end of the day’s festivities as highlights ensuring the 30th edition would go down in history.

A distinctive red heart with the fundraiser’s name, most often seen in the form of a sticker worn by those who have donated, has been WOŚP’s symbol since it began in 1993.

There was some criticism of WOŚP this year for the fact that it still uses fireworks for its finale in central Warsaw. The city’s mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, has also been accused of hypocrisy for participating in the finale despite seeking to prevent fireworks displays on New Year’s Eve because of the distress they cause to animals.

Owsiak apologised for the noise from the display, saying that it was the organisation that was to blame, not the city, reports TVN24. Celebrating 30 years of fundraising was a “fiesta” that justified the “exactly three minutes 59 seconds” of fireworks, he added, promising that there would be no fireworks at future editions.

Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.