Warsaw Fellowship 2016

DOM PL - POLAND UNITES, NOT DIVIDES US

Paulina Banasik, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Angie Liao, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

Mikołaj Solik, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Although  the  rate of immigration  in Poland  is one of the lowest in EU (foreigners represent about 0,5% of Poland’s inhabitants), immigration is a very hot topic in  the Polish media and political discourse. Unfortunately there is not enough substantive debate in the mainstream media and immigrants and refugees are used very often as a tool for awaking fears of Poles. Our American-Polish team has been working for 10 days on Dom PL, a social campaign addressing challenges facing immigrants and refugees in the Polish context.

Our team decided to tackle this issue problem through a campaign proposing a positive approach to the presence of foreigners in Poland. Instead of focusing on underlying the presence of the hate speech, discrimination and various obstacles that immigrants in Poland face on an everyday basis, we wanted to emphasize the common ground held by all who live in Poland, regardless of their origins.
As such, we asked each participant of our campaign a simple question: What do you love about Poland? Honest responses of Poles and foreigners show that people tend to focus too much on differences between people instead of looking for similarities that can be the first step to an intercultural dialogue. By sharing such positive representations and the human face of “the Others”, we hope to fight against the negative or doubtful public opinion on refugees and migrants and the perception of those who were not born in Poland as eternal outsiders.

Over the course of the campaign we all became graphic designers, film-makers, photographers, and detectives looking for the people who would like to join our campaign. Our number one enemy was time - we would have loved to have had more time and to engage more people with the project. With more time we may also have been able to establish ourselves more officially in order to gain the trust of a broader range of participants. We faced a fair amount of rejection, especially when soliciting people on the streets, and sometimes a bit of suspicion, though no experience was ever unpleasant. Nonetheless, thanks to our engagement, we were lucky enough to taste some traditional coffee from Eritrea, meet the founder of the Polish branch of Amnesty International, ride the vintage tram full of refugees through Warsaw and experience many other heartwarming moments.

With every next meeting with our amazing participants, we became more addicted to our idea! It was a great pleasure to see smiles on their faces and to hear their opinions about the project. Although it is a small social campaign thanks to them we got to know that we are doing something really  important.
And in spite of the tiredness (and occasional discouragement)
it was really a great time, nurturing our minds with even more ideas!