Picture: The Puszke Foundation
Support for Ukrainian and Polish Communities
Paideia alumnus Marcin Grynberg and his Puszke Foundation team has joined in relief efforts for members of the Ukrainian Jewish community arriving in Poland since the outbreak of the war in 2022. Currently, the foundation offers aid and assistance programs for Ukrainian refugees: an emergency assistance program and the ‘Housing’ program. At the moment, it is coordinating a fundraiser to buy power generators for the Jewish community in Kiev. In the first months of the war, Puszke helped, in cooperation with other Polish Jewish organizations, provide refugees with transportation from the Polish-Ukrainian border, supplies, meals, clothing, medicine and accommodation.
Paideia alumnus Marcin Grynberg established the Puszke Foundation together with Igor Susid in 2018, originally in response to the social and financial needs of the Jewish community in Poland. Until then, international Jewish organizations had supported the Polish Jewish community. It is thanks to their incredible work that, after the tragedy of the Holocaust and the oppression of communism, the Polish community was able to experience a rebirth. After years of depending on the charity of others, the Puszke Foundation wants to involve members of the community in helping one another. Puszke wants to emphasize the meaning of tzedakah, as well as the importance of the responsibility for one another. The foundation’s goal is to raise money to provide support and direct financial assistance to children and families in the community that are in need: from addressing basic needs, through ensuring access to extracurricular activities for gifted children, to co-financing community members’ participation in events and trips that serve to integrate the community.
At Puszke, the belief is that tikkun olam is the foundation of Jewish identity. The task is not easy and cannot be done overnight. But Marcin and the whole Puszke team firmly believe that together, we can fix the world, piece by piece.