“Under Wings” is taking off!
Growth often comes in fits and starts. Or in waves, if you like. And especially often at times and in ways you don’t expect.
After the wonderful start in the summer of 2023 of the project “Under Wings”, a program in which we provide guidance and mentoring for teenagers on their path to independence in collaboration with local orphanages, in recent months we have asked ourselves several times how to effectively manage follow up. How to grow…?
Because additional locations require additional mentors, additional finances, and above all additional open doors…
While the project manager, colleague Paulina, was busy preparing the second charity concert for the project, with a wonderful performance by the Polish-known singer Krzysztof Antkowiak (with an inspiring personal testimony!), something else suddenly happened. We regularly check requests for grant proposals from local governments – imagine our surprise when suddenly a tender was published for a project that specifically focused on personal guidance of teenagers in youth care on their path to independence… We know that our Bread of Life project is unique in that respect. Would anyone else come up with that same idea and walk away with the money? No! We had no choice but to write our own proposal within the short period of the grant application…
You know what? A few weeks later we receive the wonderful news that our proposal had been accepted for the full 100%, from us, as the only accepted provider, to receive subsidy funding of over half a million zloty (~ $ 125,000) for project costs for the years 2025 and 2026, and to suddenly have the status of the only organization offering this form of assistance with government support! Yes, our small Christian organization with personal mentors from various evangelical churches in Poznań!
Wonderful news, but also new responsibility. Because as always, the promised grant largely covers only the direct, specifically assigned costs to make the project grow at least three times bigger in a short period of time… For management costs and overhead, we are dependent on our partners and new, additional donations. Plus, how are we going to safeguard continuation after the aforementioned two years? Would you think and pray with us about how to shape this wonderful recognition and challenge into a life-changing reality for more and more teenagers?
