Zywiec Development Foundation

We are a community development foundation in the Southern Polish town of Zywiec. We were founded in 2003 and are closely involved in supporting the economic and social well being of our local community in the town and its surrounding Districts. We have more than 100 staff and have a long history of implementing various innovative programs and initiatives to benefit our local community. Since March 2022 our community became much enlarged and we have operated a Centre for Helping Ukrainian Refugees and currently have in our care more than 1200 refugees. Moe than 5000 refugees have passed through our care in one way or another since the war started of which more than 50% were children. We have implemented a number of very succesful programmes for refugees providing direct material aid or support by language training, leagl advice, vocational training linked to social integration as well as therapy programmes linked to arts, wool crafting and music. We provide educational and psychological support to Ukrainian children within and outside of the Polish School System.