How did you get in contact with the ASA-Program and what kind of project did you realize with the ASA-participants?
It was back in 2003, more than a year before Poland joined the European Union. ASA was one of the first organisations from the old member states that became interested and truly engaged in cooperation on development education with NGOs from new EU countries. It was not an obvious decision to establish a joint volunteer sending programme, which subsequently became a European network known today as GLEN, Global Education Network of Young Europeans. Development education hardly existed in Poland. Polish Humanitarian Action (PAH) had no previous experience in sending volunteers to the South. Africa seemed to be so far away from the interests of young people. ASA’s experience in volunteer-sending and global education was impressive but would work similarly in Poland? – we asked ourselves. But it turned to work very well. In 2004, together with ASA and other NGOs from new member states of the EU, PAH prepared a group of young Poles that went for their three month internships in Subsaharan Africa. Among them, was an internship in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, a place where no one from PAH was before. A European exchange, among German and Polish partner tandems was an added value. This was a beginning of a genuine and fruitful cooperation between ASA and PAH that changed lives of many people.
