ESC: Impakt is looking for Change Makers!

IMPAKT was founded in 2017 and was brought to life because of personal beliefs and common need of change. Kielce is a city that has almost 190.000 citizens, but youth don’t have many opportunities to develop. Also for me, as a founder, Kielce is my hometown, and I always wanted to come back here, as I’ve been studying and working in different cities in Poland and abroad. I realized that there is a lot to do in Kielce because of that lack of opportunities for people like me and all the youth that is fleeding to bigger cities. Together with my friends we decided to create an organisation, that will allow youth to speak. That will give them a space that they can profit from. We can’t create youth policies without young people, which many others forget about. With time, Impakt has become a multidimensional platform for self-development. The Association was created out of the heart’s need - of its founders, volunteers and people to whom our activities are directed. The name comes from the main areas of our activity - Integration, Youth, Potential, Activity, Culture and Tourism. In our activities, we mainly deal with various types of non-formal education and we care for youth participation. We also act for local community - we conduct intergenerational theater plays, gardening workshops for children or survival camps - these are just some of the events we organized in the past years. We also organize foreign language projects. During our trips, we conduct city games, visit cultural institutions and foreign schools in order to to familiarize young people with the specificity of education in various countries. We are active in the area of the Erasmus + program, organizing international exchanges and trainings courses, as well as the European Solidarity Corps program, thanks to which we can implement local and national activities. Impakt is a place where young people can find their passions, implement plans that until now seemed unrealistic and learn how to obtain funding to make their dreams come true. Impakt is created and led mainly by 2 youth leaders. Monika Łuszczek, educated as a teacher and translator of English and French, works in the Association as a project coordinator, establishes and cares for relations with foreign partners. Piotr Pisiewicz, international relations graduate, a visionary and oasis of peace, founder and president of the Association, has been coordinating youth groups for 7 years, participating in youth exchanges and training courses, as well as training on the spot in Poland. Only during the last year, he led 4 youth groups in various projects, he also organized the Congress of Youth Councils of the Swietokrzyskie Voivodeship. Thanks to numerous opportunities to work with young people at various levels, he has developed a unique language adapted to a given age group. We work with youth on a daily basis and we see how they grow, develop and change. We are aware of our role in this process and we contribute to it by discussing with youth, creating a space for their development, realizing the projects that tackle a lot of subjects relevant for them, such as environmental issues, survival practices, healthy lifestyle, child rights, outdoor education, intercultural education, language skills or cultural activities. We are listening to our volounteers’ needs and we try to fullfill them or to help them find the answer for the questions they are asking. Usually we work with youth aged 10-20, as they are the largest group who are involved in many actions we organise, but sometimes we work with kindergartens and universities – and even with elderly people, who love to share their experience with youth. We try to diminish the gap between generations and it really gives us big smile on our faces. We work with many organisations in Poland and abroad to reduce the level of inequality among people and to raise awareness of our role in the process. We would like youth to be aware that they are the change. That they have the power to change things, because everything starts from the will – big, abstract ideas like peace and love as well as small, local projects. By intercultural and international communication youth learn a lot of things that can’t be taught without experience. We are proud to facilitate these experiences for them. Due to the specifics of our work and activities we decided it is high time to apply for Quality Label and be able to send and host volunteers, which will have a great impact on what we do. When it comes to hosting, we already have some experience - during the last 3 years we hosted 3 volunteers from France - Elias, Lucas and Andrea. Andrea has just arrived in the beginning of December 2021 and will stay with Impakt for 9 months. All of them have been our long-term volunteers thanks to a French organisation called Jeunes a Travers le Monde. We have an impression that Kielce is still not a popular choice among foreign volunteers but we hope to be able to change that soon.