Renovate a house for disabled girls
Donation protected
The goal of this collection is to support three exceptional women who are struggling to have a place they could call their own home.
Place:
Poznań, Wielkopolskie Province, Poland
Purpose of raising:
The end of wandering – the renovation of a flat
Diagnosis:
Ula and Asia: intellectual disability, drug resistant epilepsy, asthma
Not to fade away, not to get mad, to draw the strength. Whence? From faith, from the energy of other people, from the spring that always comes and it is around us, it is waking up in everyone of us. And to keep going, every day, no matter what. To survive another day, another night, another epilepsy attack, first that of Asia, then Ula's. To change the sheets that are always wet after the attack. And the alarm clock will ring in a few hours. Another day of the rest of the life. The life that is difficult but you have to do it, who among us would do otherwise? Or maybe let’s put it in another way: who would have the strength to act in the way? On your own, facing fear, the great unknown, abandoning your existing life and the future for your sisters. Well, who would do that?
Dorota has never had healthy sisters if not having counted the time until the first epilepsy attack of Ula, when she was 2 years old. It is still unknown, till today there was no reason found for the attack, what the origins of the attacks and the sickness are. Genetic testing showed nothing. People were asking: if Ula was sick, why would the parents decide to have another sick child? Surely, except for the fact that the first attack of Ula occurred, when their mother had already been pregnant with Asia. Febrile convulsions of tiny Asia also appeared to have been epileptic attacks. The youngest sister, Ania, despite of her disability is independent. Here we know what happened: complications arose during delivery, the second of twins, Ewa, didn’t survive.
Dorota left her home town Słupca to study in Poznań and the sisters stayed with their parents. She sorted out her life, she had a job, a boyfriend, her plans for life, like everybody. Until 2010, when the sick sisters were left without care: a cancer that first had taken their father, then took their mother. Dorota took them to Poznań, to a rented room. She didn’t fall into pieces and she only continued living, balancing work, relationship and care of her sisters. Each day was more difficult for her because Ula and Asia are not self-reliant, they need somebody to be with them, and not someone who is returning after 12 hours at work. When their mother was still alive but started to be sick, she had applied to a residential home of the Ark Community, so that after her death the girls could be taken to the best place possible but unfortunately, there’s no a free place until today. The girls were sent to another residential home; Dorota still remembers with what kind of hope she had taken them there and with what kind of trauma she took them back 2 years later. The place was about 100 km from Poznań. If you don’t have a car (and Dorota has none) you can get there only by train and then you have to walk 4 km on foot. Dorota didn’t complain but she couldn’t bear what she was seeing in DPS (Dom Pomocy Społecznej - a residential home). She knew she would need to take the girls from the place, she would need to find quickly a way for them to reunite.
The residential home is a place where you are waiting for death. You would need to see it with your own eyes, when the adults are suffering from separation anxiety disorder. There are a lot of people in their 50s or 60s, who are often forgotten, lonely, removed from the history of their families; many of them are not remembered, nor visited by anyone. When Dorota was taking the girls from that house, she knew that she would never give them anywhere anymore. First, she had to abandon her previous life: her relationship didn’t survive a new perspective of sharing the space with two sick adult women, she had to resign from work. She started a life that she hadn’t known before: the life of standing in queues while applying to various institutions, a life with epileptic attacks in the middle of night, living from 10th to 10th each month (and even it was seldom that good; without a job she had to save on everything). The worst thing was to find her wat around in the new reality. For some people Dorota became almost a saint, who gave up herself to help her sisters and not only for a while: Asia and Ula need a lifelong help. For others, she became a person who had found herself such a new way of life: she doesn’t have to go to work, she spends the whole day at home with her sisters… And at the same time nobody would like to be in the same situation as she is now.
The flat turned out to be the biggest problem. ‘Since our mum died, we have been applying for a municipal housing’, says Dorota. ‘When I worked, we exceeded the income criterion, when I stopped working and we moved from a room to a rented flat, we exceeded the surface criterion, for we had more than 5 m2 per person, excluding the common spaces like the kitchen, the bathroom and the corridor. It also boarded on a true miracle to find a flat to rent. The landlords were asking: with whom are you going to live? With your sisters? Are they students? Aren't they? Pensioners? What happened? And so following the thread to the end it turned out that they wouldn’t rent us the apartment. And the next day, I saw again the same rental advertisement. That’s life.’.
At the same time Dorota was applying to ZKZL (Zarząd Komunalnych Zasobów Lokalów – the city of Poznań’s administration responsible for managing the city’s immovable property). Every three months they issue a list of apartments that require a capital renovation. If somebody fulfills the criteria, and the sisters did, they can inhabit the listed flat under one condition: that in the time prescribed by ZKZL the future tenant would renovate the flat. Then they have a guaranteed rental contract: nobody can eject them, they have a registration of residence, stable monthly costs on the level equivalent to a room rental and the place of their own. A great hope and great obstacle. Dorota decided to mount this hope the staircase even if she was to lose her might. The apartment’s renovation will have to be completed by the end of June 2016, otherwise the sisters are forced to give it back.
Asia is now 29 years old, Ula is 31. They’re both intelectually disabled, suffering from a drug resistant epilepsy and some other afflictions. Dorota doesn’t work; she has to take care of her sisters. They girls receive pensions that are spent on medicines and paying the bills. They can only dream about renovating the flat on their own! We won’t succeed without your help. There’s someone who will sponsor a the central heating system (yuppi!) and new windows. But in order to start renovation, they need money to install and plug the electricity in as all the wiring has to be done together with the gas installation. So once we collect 10.000 PLN (+/- 25.300 USD, +/- 22.680 EUR, +/- 17.470 GBP), we can start the renovation and at the same time do whatever is possible to collect the rest of money by the end of June 2016.
Why should we help them? We could ask: why not? Rarely, we meet such ordinary yet extraordinary people. And the three of them are such an ordinary - the extraordinary. They were affected by the disease but there’s something keeping them together: their sisterly love. Nobody needs to tell Dorota that she’s doing the right thing and that she’s to be admired. She doesn’t hide the fact that these are hard times for her, that sometimes she wants to yell, that she would like to have a different life. But at the same time she loves her sisters like nothing on earth and she cannot imagine to lose them. Even if Ula feels offended that Dorota doesn’t read her fairytales or she pretends to be a tractor, a god, a cow a cat or the Polish fairytale hero Matołek the Billy-Goat. Or, when Asia doesn’t accept the fact that the Christmas tree cannot stand the whole year. Or, when they say Dorota that they will complain to their mum, even if they have visited their mum's grave just a few minutes before.
Hello, people! There’s a thing to do! Will we renovate them this house? We need only to roll up our sleeves and activate our kindness and start acting! It is feasible! Let the Łodziak sisters finally have a place of their own, their own safe haven.
Payments can be made via GoFundMe or, alternatively via:
Fundacja Fabryka Pomocy
ul. Poznańska 111c
62-090 Kiekrz
POLAND
The account
IBAN: PL16114020170000430213058744
BIC/SWIFT: BREXPLPWMBK.
The title of the bank transfer:
dla Uli Łodziak
or PayPal
In order to do it, you need to open website www.paypal.com and choose “Send”. Three fields will appear: e-mail (you fill: [email redacted]), amount and a currency to choose (see below).
Press “Continue”. Choose the option “Friends or family”. You can now log in to your PayPal account and proceed with the payment.
or the Polish fundraising portal SiePomaga
(EN version for the collection:
https://www.siepomaga.pl/en/siostrylodziak).
Place:
Poznań, Wielkopolskie Province, Poland
Purpose of raising:
The end of wandering – the renovation of a flat
Diagnosis:
Ula and Asia: intellectual disability, drug resistant epilepsy, asthma
Not to fade away, not to get mad, to draw the strength. Whence? From faith, from the energy of other people, from the spring that always comes and it is around us, it is waking up in everyone of us. And to keep going, every day, no matter what. To survive another day, another night, another epilepsy attack, first that of Asia, then Ula's. To change the sheets that are always wet after the attack. And the alarm clock will ring in a few hours. Another day of the rest of the life. The life that is difficult but you have to do it, who among us would do otherwise? Or maybe let’s put it in another way: who would have the strength to act in the way? On your own, facing fear, the great unknown, abandoning your existing life and the future for your sisters. Well, who would do that?
Dorota has never had healthy sisters if not having counted the time until the first epilepsy attack of Ula, when she was 2 years old. It is still unknown, till today there was no reason found for the attack, what the origins of the attacks and the sickness are. Genetic testing showed nothing. People were asking: if Ula was sick, why would the parents decide to have another sick child? Surely, except for the fact that the first attack of Ula occurred, when their mother had already been pregnant with Asia. Febrile convulsions of tiny Asia also appeared to have been epileptic attacks. The youngest sister, Ania, despite of her disability is independent. Here we know what happened: complications arose during delivery, the second of twins, Ewa, didn’t survive.
Dorota left her home town Słupca to study in Poznań and the sisters stayed with their parents. She sorted out her life, she had a job, a boyfriend, her plans for life, like everybody. Until 2010, when the sick sisters were left without care: a cancer that first had taken their father, then took their mother. Dorota took them to Poznań, to a rented room. She didn’t fall into pieces and she only continued living, balancing work, relationship and care of her sisters. Each day was more difficult for her because Ula and Asia are not self-reliant, they need somebody to be with them, and not someone who is returning after 12 hours at work. When their mother was still alive but started to be sick, she had applied to a residential home of the Ark Community, so that after her death the girls could be taken to the best place possible but unfortunately, there’s no a free place until today. The girls were sent to another residential home; Dorota still remembers with what kind of hope she had taken them there and with what kind of trauma she took them back 2 years later. The place was about 100 km from Poznań. If you don’t have a car (and Dorota has none) you can get there only by train and then you have to walk 4 km on foot. Dorota didn’t complain but she couldn’t bear what she was seeing in DPS (Dom Pomocy Społecznej - a residential home). She knew she would need to take the girls from the place, she would need to find quickly a way for them to reunite.
The residential home is a place where you are waiting for death. You would need to see it with your own eyes, when the adults are suffering from separation anxiety disorder. There are a lot of people in their 50s or 60s, who are often forgotten, lonely, removed from the history of their families; many of them are not remembered, nor visited by anyone. When Dorota was taking the girls from that house, she knew that she would never give them anywhere anymore. First, she had to abandon her previous life: her relationship didn’t survive a new perspective of sharing the space with two sick adult women, she had to resign from work. She started a life that she hadn’t known before: the life of standing in queues while applying to various institutions, a life with epileptic attacks in the middle of night, living from 10th to 10th each month (and even it was seldom that good; without a job she had to save on everything). The worst thing was to find her wat around in the new reality. For some people Dorota became almost a saint, who gave up herself to help her sisters and not only for a while: Asia and Ula need a lifelong help. For others, she became a person who had found herself such a new way of life: she doesn’t have to go to work, she spends the whole day at home with her sisters… And at the same time nobody would like to be in the same situation as she is now.
The flat turned out to be the biggest problem. ‘Since our mum died, we have been applying for a municipal housing’, says Dorota. ‘When I worked, we exceeded the income criterion, when I stopped working and we moved from a room to a rented flat, we exceeded the surface criterion, for we had more than 5 m2 per person, excluding the common spaces like the kitchen, the bathroom and the corridor. It also boarded on a true miracle to find a flat to rent. The landlords were asking: with whom are you going to live? With your sisters? Are they students? Aren't they? Pensioners? What happened? And so following the thread to the end it turned out that they wouldn’t rent us the apartment. And the next day, I saw again the same rental advertisement. That’s life.’.
At the same time Dorota was applying to ZKZL (Zarząd Komunalnych Zasobów Lokalów – the city of Poznań’s administration responsible for managing the city’s immovable property). Every three months they issue a list of apartments that require a capital renovation. If somebody fulfills the criteria, and the sisters did, they can inhabit the listed flat under one condition: that in the time prescribed by ZKZL the future tenant would renovate the flat. Then they have a guaranteed rental contract: nobody can eject them, they have a registration of residence, stable monthly costs on the level equivalent to a room rental and the place of their own. A great hope and great obstacle. Dorota decided to mount this hope the staircase even if she was to lose her might. The apartment’s renovation will have to be completed by the end of June 2016, otherwise the sisters are forced to give it back.
Asia is now 29 years old, Ula is 31. They’re both intelectually disabled, suffering from a drug resistant epilepsy and some other afflictions. Dorota doesn’t work; she has to take care of her sisters. They girls receive pensions that are spent on medicines and paying the bills. They can only dream about renovating the flat on their own! We won’t succeed without your help. There’s someone who will sponsor a the central heating system (yuppi!) and new windows. But in order to start renovation, they need money to install and plug the electricity in as all the wiring has to be done together with the gas installation. So once we collect 10.000 PLN (+/- 25.300 USD, +/- 22.680 EUR, +/- 17.470 GBP), we can start the renovation and at the same time do whatever is possible to collect the rest of money by the end of June 2016.
Why should we help them? We could ask: why not? Rarely, we meet such ordinary yet extraordinary people. And the three of them are such an ordinary - the extraordinary. They were affected by the disease but there’s something keeping them together: their sisterly love. Nobody needs to tell Dorota that she’s doing the right thing and that she’s to be admired. She doesn’t hide the fact that these are hard times for her, that sometimes she wants to yell, that she would like to have a different life. But at the same time she loves her sisters like nothing on earth and she cannot imagine to lose them. Even if Ula feels offended that Dorota doesn’t read her fairytales or she pretends to be a tractor, a god, a cow a cat or the Polish fairytale hero Matołek the Billy-Goat. Or, when Asia doesn’t accept the fact that the Christmas tree cannot stand the whole year. Or, when they say Dorota that they will complain to their mum, even if they have visited their mum's grave just a few minutes before.
Hello, people! There’s a thing to do! Will we renovate them this house? We need only to roll up our sleeves and activate our kindness and start acting! It is feasible! Let the Łodziak sisters finally have a place of their own, their own safe haven.
Payments can be made via GoFundMe or, alternatively via:
Fundacja Fabryka Pomocy
ul. Poznańska 111c
62-090 Kiekrz
POLAND
The account
IBAN: PL16114020170000430213058744
BIC/SWIFT: BREXPLPWMBK.
The title of the bank transfer:
dla Uli Łodziak
or PayPal
In order to do it, you need to open website www.paypal.com and choose “Send”. Three fields will appear: e-mail (you fill: [email redacted]), amount and a currency to choose (see below).
Press “Continue”. Choose the option “Friends or family”. You can now log in to your PayPal account and proceed with the payment.
or the Polish fundraising portal SiePomaga
(EN version for the collection:
https://www.siepomaga.pl/en/siostrylodziak).
Organizer
Alicja Baranowska
Organizer
Bruxelles, BRU, Belgium
