The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity Foundation intends to launch a new awareness campaign, which aims to draw attention to the situation of parents and guardians, who stay with their children for the duration of treatment at paediatric hospitals. Since we have made an appeal for testimonies we have heard about different experiences parents have when accompanying their children - both very bad and discouraging and very good, encouraging stories. We firmly believe that the parents' presence only serves to improve the child's chances at swift recovery, and parents should not and cannot be treated as intruders or even as paying guests at the hospitals.
Find Jurek Owsiak's letter to hospital directors below:
Dear Sir or Madam,
The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity has recently purchased fold out beds for parents and guardians, who accompany their children. It is the first time that the Foundation has assigned funds to purchase furniture for adults visiting their children at the hospital because we have been discussing the problems relating to the stay of the parents who accompany their children for quite some time, and we decided to focus our attention on solving this issue during our most recent equipment purchases. We bought recliners for parents staying with their children - 438 chairs and fold-out beds in total will be delivered to paediatric hospitals in Poland. These recliners are to be made available to parents free of charge.
The parents' response was massive, once we made the decision to address this matter publicly. We have received thousands of messages, comments and e-mails. I am sure you are well aware of the issues connected with parents' staying at the hospital to watch over their children. Guardians have no access to beds, often resorting to sleeping on the floors, or renting beds from the hospital management. Some hospitals ask parents to leave the wards - for different reasons. This problem does not seem to have an easy solution, but we aim to improve the situation by making purchases for paediatric hospitals. We would like to kindly ask for your input - what can be done to introduce new quality of parents' stay at the hospital, which, doubtless, will also improve the overall atmosphere at the wards.
Five days before the 32nd Grand Finale of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, we visited the 'Pomnik - Centrum Zdrowia Dziecka' (Children's Memorial Health Institute) to ceremoniously inaugurate the first Ophthalmic Simulation Laboratory in Europe dedicated exclusively to the field of peadiatric ophthalmology.
The registration of Collection Centres, i.e. hubs of volunteers organizing the Grand Finale events for their local community, is now over. Collection Centres will be actively participating in the 32nd Grand Finale fundraiser across Poland and in 101 locations around the world!
The 31st Grand Finale is not just about local events or the main concert in Warsaw! Each year we do our best to make it possible for everyone to join our Orchestra from every corner of the Earth!
