Welcome to the Wooden Puppet Program Site!
This is the web site of the "Pajacyk" Program run by the Polish Humanitarian Organisation. The funds we collect provide supplementary meals for children in the poorest regions of Poland.

Before reading more about the Wooden Puppet Program, you can go back to the homepage www.pajacyk.pl and click on the Puppets belly to help feed a hungry child. After clicking, you will see the banners of our sponsors. Each of them pays approximately 0.07 EUR for your visit. In such a way, you can easily support our program and the children we serve by donating no more than a minute of your time. To protect our sponsors we count only one visit daily from one computer. 30 thousand people visit the website each day.

The Polish Humanitarian Organisation began the child nutrition program in 1996 in regions where state collective farms were located during the communism period. As a result of Polands economic changes collective farms were shut down, leaving many families unprepared to deal with the new socioeconomic situation. The Polish countryside has had the most difficulty in adjusting to the changes. Farms in these regions are very small and very underdeveloped, the farming culture is low and there is a huge unemployment rate.

The name "Pajacyk", roughly translated from Polish, means wooden puppet in English. More precisely, the image of a wooden puppet is closely associated with the childrens story about Pinocchio, the creation of Geppetto, an Italian carpenter, whose dream of having a son is realised when a good-willing fairy makes Pinnocchio into a human child. The wooden puppet that serves as our programs image has an empty belly, representing the hunger that we strive to eliminate from the lives of the children we work to help.

The program’s aim is to sponsor one hot meal a day at school for children who are not tended by the social welfare centers. That is often the first step to provide equal opportunities and improve the condition of children in rural areas.

The direct objective of the campaign is to provide meals to as many children as possible. Indirectly, the campaign contributes to improved school performance (a free meal is often an incentive that makes children come to school more regularly), and stimulates local social initiatives as schools in small villages establish closer relationship with the Foundation. Some schools have also received educational aid and kitchen equipment.

The Wooden Puppet campaign is 100% funded from public collections. Each year PHO undertakes a number of different actions to raise funds. We are trying to come up with attractive forms of collections that provide opportunity to participate and support the campaign for both companies and individuals.

At average 20% children in each polish school need nutrition support, but the child nutrition program is carried out only in several places in Poland. Information based on application forms sent to us by school principals, helps us decide which schools qualify for help.

Nutrition for children in schools is the best way to support a child, her family and her school. It gives a guarantee of putting the money to proper use and enables clear accounting. We wish to provide at least one hot meal, every day of the school year to children in need.

School term 2006/2007:
In the first semester of school year 2006/2007 PHO started out by providing meals to 2,344 children in 57 schools.

Until today PHO have sponsored more than 4 millions meals.