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Success Stories Assistance Areas SEED Reports Contact Information Last updated: 32     Local Views of Polish Success The President of the National Bank of Poland on U.S. assistance The Director General of the Polish Bank Association on USAID work to reform the banking sector Introducing sweetcorn through U.S. volunteers Making cities work - Ostrow Wielkopolski Working on the housing problem - Lublin Making money from scrap - how one entrepreneur did it in Zelow Incubating business in Zelow Fundusz Mikro and Alicja's Kiosk Local community development in Sokolka Community action beats crime in Bialystok Krakow's environmental renaissance Q&A with Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, Chairwoman and President of the National Bank of Poland How significant a role did USAID play in the restructuring of Poland's banking system? Gronkiewicz-Waltz: 1989 to 1995 was a time of dynamic changes in the Polish banking system, marked by a banking crisis. USAID supported the efforts of the Polish Government and the National Bank of Poland with broad assistance: USAID supported the development of efficient banking supervision in Poland and provided NBP with the expertise on how to regulate and supervise the banking sector and how to deal with the banks in crisis rather than to spend American taxpayers' money on saving Polish banks. With hindsight, we can say that this approach was the right one. In 1993, a progam was started to strengthen one of the key elements of the supervision process, that is the on-site inspection of banks. A set of inspection procedures was developed in the form of a 1000-page "On-Site Inspection Handbook" that set out bank audit principles in the key banking areas. [USAID] also provided training to over 260 supervision inspectors as well as specialized teams. What was USAID's most useful work in banking supervision, in your mind? Gronkiewicz-Waltz: During practical bank inspection workshops we had several dozen people also trained who now independently manage inspections or specialized teams that investigate different areas of banking risk. I believe that this area of USAID's assistance, in addition to the strengthening of off-site supervision, was the most successful. As a result of the off-site supervision assistance, new analytical tools were developed in the years 1995-99- the Ratio Report (the Polish version of the American UBPR Supervision Report), the Supervision Sheet, and the Central Banking Supervision Office (GINB) staff were trained to use these tools. Your banking supervision model is highly regarded today. What were the obstacles in its implementation? Gronkiewicz-Waltz: Looking at this with some perspective, it was much more difficult to transfer certain American legal and economic solutions pertaining to dealing with banks in crisis situations to the Polish soil. Differences in law, the greater authority of American bank supervision bodies compared to Polish bank supervision, a much better developed financial market, together with its instruments and institutions – debt securitization, mergers and acquisitions – made it difficult to transfer this type of expertise to Poland... we drew from the experience of various countries such as Spain, Scandinavian countries, Chile and, to some extent, the USA. In this context, I would like to stress the importance of consulting on a strategic level financed by USAID... regarding such key issues as supervision regulations, the banking law, consolidated supervision issues, legal mechanisms strengthening the effectiveness of supervision and prevention of crises. I perceive the eight years of our cooperation with USAID and the companies it commissioned a success. Back to Top   Krzysztof Pietraszkiewicz Director General Polish Bank Association After the Round Table Accord, Krzysztof Pietraszkiewicz, an enthusiastic adviser without any party affiliation, went to work for Poland's first democratically elected government. And if you visit with him today in his office a stone's throw from Warsaw's National Museum, he'll tell you that those heady days, and the people he knew and worked with on both sides of the political divide, were great preparation for his next career. "I had contacts in the [Communist] government and contacts in the community, in the opposition and then in the Solidarity-led government," he recalled. These days, Krzysztof Pietraszkiewicz is one of Poland's leading bank reformers constantly pushing for new institutions and strategies. As general director of the Polish Bank Association (PBA) for the last decade, he has enjoyed a long and fruitful association with USAID, cooperation that led to the establishment of a bank clearinghouse system, rating agency, the Over-the-Counter Market, and the Warsaw Institute of Banking, among other institutions. When it was founded in 1991, PBA immediately began to develop the institutions that would allow the banking industry not only to develop but to work together. "We had to create these structures," he said, "we simply couldn't wait. At the beginning of the decade, banks did not know how to talk to each other, about techniques, fresh information, or even individual credit information." Pietraszkiewicz studied American banking on a USAID sponsored trip to the U.S. and American advisers in Poland have assisted in the creation of a safe, stable, banking sector, he said. Moreover, Pietraszkiewicz noted, the advisers had good ideas on how a post-communist society that missed so much open-market development could usefully drop elements of American banking that were becoming redundant. "Specialists from the U.S. told us to skip the checking system and go straight to plastic cards," he recalled. Polish banks took the advice and skipped the cumbersome checking account model, which is growing more and more obsolete in the U.S., and spent their money developing and promoting the ubiquitous debit and credit cards. "What was important for us was that this advice was coming from independent sources who didn't have business in Polish banks. It was trustworthy." Through the association, Polish banks now offer their opinions to parliament, the government and the National Bank of Poland on relevant issues. The association's work with USAID led to many other U.S. partners that the association continues to look to for advice and commercial partnerships, according to Pietraszkiewicz."Developing the banking industry was and is my mission," he said. Stability achieved, he said, the next concern is accession to the European Union. "And now," he said, "we must look outward to harmony with the rest of Europe." Back to Top   Alex Bochenski and the First Volunteers A Solidarity activist, Alex Bochenski, scion of an old noble family, was drawn away from politics and back to the soil. In 1991, he bought a farm in Olsztyn and pondered what to grow. Bochenski had traveled to the U.S. on study tours and seen the sweet corn growing high in Wisconsin and he wanted that in Poland. The conventional wisdom was that sweet corn could not grow in Poland and even if it could, no one would eat it. Bochenski, the first Polish farmer to grow sweet corn, proved both theories to be false. His biggest problem would be marketing his product: While corn on the cob had a long tradition in the U.S., Poles looked at it as food for their livestock. At that time, the first USAID agricultural volunteers were on the ground offering technical assistance to individual farmers. Marcin Opas, who has worked for various USAID projects since the early days, aided Bochenski. "We helped him to approach Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), which had been importing all their corn in Poland from Hungary. Once we made contact with KFC, we convinced other farmers to grow corn in Central and Western Poland, and KFC was using it by 1994-95." Individual farmers like Bochenski received technical assistance from USAID for at least six years. Now Polish sweet corn, cut and frozen, is in most of the supermarkets. And if you travel to the Baltic Sea in the summer, you'll see kiosks selling nothing less than corn on the cob. Back to Top   Ostrow Wielkopolski: Not Just Sitting Around When Miroslaw Kruszynski was imprisoned in the early 1980s, he was told by an elderly scholar and fellow inmate that he better "not just sit around," but think about what he would do when he and other student activists in jail would be running the country. The young student started developing in his head a plan for transparent local government. The scholar reappeared in Kruszynski's life in 1990, when he was elected President of Ostrow Wielkopolski. "He said to me, why are you so happy? Anyone could be elected city president today. You have to keep learning." Ten years later, he shows a visitor his well-executed plan for a working, transparent, revenue-building government, and the chart looks suspiciously like a car engine. But then again the city he's presided over for the last decade, Ostrow Wielkopolski, is the Cadillac of Poland's gminas. It's hard to imagine Kruszynski, the serious-minded three-time president of this city of 75,000, demonstrating during Poland's unrest. But he exhibits a single-mindedness that suits the activist and the visionary leader, and it has helped put Ostrow on the map. The city has participated in a variety of USAID programs, and Kruszynski himself has benefited from USAID study tours. Ostrow has been at the forefront of utilizing many insititutions USAID helped to develop: Ostrow issued the first municipal bond publicly traded on the Over-the Counter Market; it was rated by the Central European rating agency USAID also helped establish. In 1999, the city issued Bearer Bonds for the third time in the largest offering for the municipality. And so far, Ostrow is still the only municipality to use this means of raising capital. What is so impressive is not the fact that Ostrow was first and fearless, but that it has reaped rewards. In 1990, the city had 150 kilometers of unpaved roads, and a survey made it clear that residents thought that was their biggest problem. "Achieving a certain means through the bond issues has allowed us to spend money on developing the infrastructure," Miroslaw Kruszynski said. Today, all of Ostrow's roads are paved. Business followed the roads and unemployment fell. Ostrow is a recipient of assistance in the Local Government Partnership Program, and USAID has helped the city with its economic development strategy, analysis of its opportunities and weaknesses, and measures to attract investors. One of the most powerful effects of the transformation to a market-driven economy can be seen in Ostrow's limited liability company, Holdikom S.A.– a parent company that includes the city's heating plant, water and sewage treatment plant, bus and housing estate offices and sanitation company. The city's goal is to sell 49 percent of the shares of Holdikom to the inhabitants of Ostrow, offering the shares at preferential rates."All this helps to release us from the old way of thinking and bring us into the new world," Kruszynski said.  Back to Top   A Renaissance in Lublin In 1989, parts of the Bronowice and Kosminek neighborhoods in Lublin looked like something out of 19th century Manhattan: Old tenement buildings owned by the city had become flooded, deteriorating shells for forgotten factory workers and their families. New makeshift structures built nearby were illegal and problematic. For thirty years, they had been slated for demolition by the communist government and so residents were denied access to services and infrastructure, yet the buildings were never torn down. Families without plumbing could be seen hauling water to their homes in the morning. USAID's Housing Finance and Municipal Advisory program came to Lublin to build a bridge between local residents and the city government--a goal that must have seemed noble but naïve. Yet by 1994, Lublin's Local Initiative program was one of only twelve projects in the world to receive international recognition at the United Nations Habitat II Conference for its success. From 1992 to 1994, USAID paid for Lublin city officials to go to international training programs offered by the Unit for Housing and Urbanization at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where public private partnerships were the focus of the discussion. The results of a questionnaire sent to residents and their concerns about living conditions were published in the local paper. At a public meeting in Bronowice, it was announced that the area would not be razed and improvements would begin. Ewa Kipta led this initiative on behalf of the City. In three years, about 300 houses were partially or fully renovated and nearly 100 new ones built. Close to 150 people are working in small businesses in an additional 45 new and converted buildings. And what was once urban blight are now thriving communities. These days, Lublin is working with the "Regardless of Bad Weather Foundation", a grantee working with LGPP. The foundation is preparing a "barometric" report on the cooperation between public administration and NGOs in several cities to analyze how far they've come in the process. Back to Top   Zelow Starting from Scrap: Kaczmarek's Yard In 1994, Boguslaw Kaczmarek was down on his luck, and he was not alone. The town, his town, of Zelow, in the central Lodz region of Poland, faced an alarming 38 percent unemployment rate, more than twice Poland's average at the time. When he was forced to scrap his textile looms, he was told that scrapping was bucking the trend, and becoming a good business. Kaczmarek also noted the bustling activity of a small business incubator-also bucking the trend - and the unused land accompanying it. He asked Emilia Kansy-Slowinska of the Zelow Development Foundation if he could start his scrap business on that land. After 6 months, he grossed 4,000 PLN a month. Today, Kaczmarek's yard is an evocative testament to the idea of transformation. Glistening showerheads pile up next to bright copper coiling, tired teapots rest near a mountain of king-sized cans of beer, all waiting to be melted into molten rivers. You can taste the metal in the back of your throat and you can see it's damn hard work. This year he'll gross one million PLN. "With my own resources, this would've taken about twenty years," he said. "But with cheap loans and some assistance, I've done this in six years." Kaczmarek's businesss is sustainable now, and with 11 employees, he's looking to expand. Back to Top   Zelow: No Roof, Two Walls The business incubator that assisted Kaczmarek is an integral element of the Zelow Development Foundation, which in turn has been at the heart of Zelow's slow but steady revitalization. These days, the Foundation offers consulting and training, entrepreneurial funding, as well as incubation for agriculture and business. "In the early 1990s, consultants actually came here and said there was nothing they could do," said Emilia Kansy-Slowinska, president of the Foundation's board. But she and a handful of other visionaries were already busy proving the naysayers wrong, registering a non-profit foundation in 1991 with little more than hope and enthusiasm."We were trying to find ways out of our communist inheritance," Kansy-Slowinska recalled. "We were very enthusiastic but we had few skills. You have to remember that in 1993 our phones, when they worked, were operated with a crank and a computer was something exotic. We had to think about how to take advantage of all the assistance." There are elements of Zelow's story that are familiar to all USAID success stories: An open-minded community with a dynamic leader, and an uneasy hunger by a group to acquire the skills necessary to ease the great needs of the community and get things done fast. Krzysztof Chmura, then the deputy mayor of Zelow, had traveled extensively and knew what to strive for. He also had the skill to find partners, what Kansy-Slowinska calls "messy, unsatisfied, uncombed people." He believed these kind of people could create something new. To find them in the community, he set up a rural entrepreneurial school. From 20 graduates, he found ten leaders for Zelow. A work team met once a week to discuss ideas and needs and then look for funds. They developed a number of projects with funding from USAID, among other donors. The first USAID project Zelow benefited from was the 1995 Smart project, which helped make its business incubator sustainable. By 1996, it had received grants from the Democracy Network project and was selected as one of 30 business support organizations around Poland to participate in Firma 2000, giving it access to highly technical assistance from U.S. and Polish consultants The business incubator, a place that began with "no roof and two walls," has spawned businesses such as Corin, a mid-priced women's underwear company that started with a few sewing machines and now exports its products to Central and Western Europe. There have been plenty of travails, and Zelow has experienced its share of transformation pains. There was of course a learning curve for applying for grants and developing a foundation. But the real difficulties came when the mayor was ousted, and essentially punished for his own innovations. "It made us realize that what we do and what we think is right isn't always acceptable. How can we make this clearer to people?" Kansy-Slowinska said. The Foundation was heavily audited by local tax inspectors, she said, because of jealousy over the grants it received. "We managed to convince the local authorities that we were not a threat, that what we do is for the community good." The Foundation's work with the Local Government Partnership Program since 1997 has assisted the municipal government in developing trust with the community and promoting Zelow. A walk through the town shows a modest, proud place with its shops well stocked and gardens maintained, yet still struggling to get to the next level. Just this spring, to endow a scholarship fund, the Zelow foundation raised 100,000 PLN at the prodding of the USAID graduate the Academy for the Development of Philanthropy in Poland, which will match the fund. Half the money came from individuals, local leaders and fundraisers; the other half was donated by the Stefan Batory Foundation. "This is a tangible sign of approval from the local community," she said. "They believe in what we're doing. And we could say that's a tangible outcome of ten years of USAID in Poland." Back to Top   Fundusz Mikro and Alicja's Kiosk Ulica Waszyngtona is a busy artery in the working class Warsaw district of Praga. "Alicja's Kiosk" stands proudly at the heart of the street, where buses and trams and cars converge and shoot across the bridge over the Vistula River. Alicja Janiszewska-Skulimowska, funded four times by Fundusz Mikro, owns the store you go to at the end of the day for the ice cream, the macaroni, the milk, the cigarettes, the dog food, and now, night cream and a little lipstick. Skulimowska opened her kiosk in 1990. Seven years later, she had run out of friends who could loan her money and needed to expand her business to keep up with the competition. She saw an ad in the newspaper for Fundusz Mikro, the microlending child of the Polish-American Enterprise Fund, which loans money to small businesses with no collateral. "I needed some help," she recalled, sitting on a lawn chair outside her kiosk. "I wasn't a tycoon and couldn't find my own resources. This was the only form of financing available. The banks wouldn't touch us." Skulimowska offers a stellar example of Fundusz Mikro at work: She organized a group of entrepreneurs who were willing to guarantee each other's loans. (One of them had problems repaying the loan, which means she and the others had to pay for him; eventually he paid his guarantors back.) With her first loan in 1997, she expanded the stock of her store, adding frozen foods such as ice cream. With her current loan, she is going to add a ventilation system including air conditioning for the summer. Her 30-year-old daughter, Isabel, has recently taken her first Fundusz Mikro loan for a stock of cosmetics to join forces with her mother. "Next we're going to redo the outside," she said. "Something a little more modern." Back to Top   Sokolka: Hope in the Midst of Hardship Sokolka, a town of 20,000 on the Belarussian border, doesn't appear on the surface to have too much going for it. It is, in some respects, a haunted place. Sokolka was a shtetl with a rich Jewish life that was destroyed by Hitler. The only visible legacy of its Jews is the man-made lake they were forced to dig before being sent to Auschwitz. The town is also the unlikely home of an old Muslim community, descendents of the Tatars who fought for Poland's Kings. Four Muslim families remain, clustered around a 200-year-old clapboard Mosque and a hilltop graveyard overlooking subsistence farms. As unemployment increased here in the early 1990s, so did the smuggling of alcohol across the border with Belarus. Plagued by economic hardship, the gmina has had a long struggle with alcoholism, a hazard here for those with no occupation. Yet beyond the weight of history and social crises is a tightly bound community that is taking care of its own. "After the changes, we saw that alcoholism is the reason for poverty in a lot of families," said Maria Talarczyk, a local activist. "Our statutory objective from the beginning was to help people in need." And it was clear that alcohol treatment was the biggest need. In 1991, the town leaders set up a modest Alcoholics Anonymous program. By 1992, they had set up a Social Welfare Foundation. In 1995, their Social and Therapeutic Service Center opened its doors, including a daycare center for children. Sokolka soon began to receive assistance from Democracy Network project, a USAID initiative from 1995-98, whose central aim was to strengthen citizen-based NGOs. "Thanks to DemNet, we learned how to write applications," said Talarczyk. Because of the technical assistance DemNet offered, Sokolka managed to find other donors from the Stefan Batory Foundation to PHARE. Under the DemNet project, the foundation created a task force of specialists to develop an alcohol abuse prevention program that now receives ongoing funding from the municipal budget. The Foundation also wrote a handbook on treating alcoholism for other gminas facing the same grim realities. Today the Sokolka Welfare Fund is a graduate of USAID assistance, helping other gminas. These days, it is one of the star funds receiving a matching grant from the Academy for the Development of Philanthropy - the successor organization to DemNet - in its community fundraising effort. By the end of March 1999, Sokolka raised 100,000 PLN, which was matched by the Academy for an endowment that will fund at least three scholarships each year for high school students going on to university. As part of the Academy program, Sokolka will continue to fundraise for the endowment. When Sokolka began its efforts treating alcoholism, one or two people would attend the AA meetings. Parents refused to take their children to the day care center for fear they would be labeled children of alcoholics. Close to forty people now attend AA meetings regularly and another 10 attend group therapy on a regular basis from all over the vovoidship. Iwona Wisniewska has worked for the fund since its inception. She knows that despite many steps forward, Sokolka, part of Poland's textile belt that was hard hit when Russia's currency collapsed two years ago, has an uphill battle toward prosperity. "If it were not for the center," she said, "I think we would have a disaster in this town." Back to Top   Bialystok Sows the Seeds Two USAID consultants came to Poland in 1990 and sought out a city of 200,000-300,000 people near the Belarus border where one of them had roots and where they could sow the seeds of Western-style community organizing. Bialystok was the right place at the right time.After the first local government election in the newly democratic Poland, the consultants approached the local city council, most of them members of the former underground movement in Bialystok. They created a group to train community organizers under the "Dialogue" program - "Dialog" in Polish-and met in the local centers of the Foundation for the Support of Local Democracy. In 1991 and 1992, Poland's first "Dialog" program surveyed residents to find out their biggest concerns. Public safety was a growing anxiety, the study found, and a planning group was convened. "We decided to attract attention right at the neighborhood level," said trainer Barbara Szczerbinska. "We began the first neighborhood watch. What was tough was the real lack of relationship between citizens and police. Neighbors had learned not to trust or confide in each other under communism, she added, and certainly they had learned not to trust the police to help them. The program served as a kind of catharsis to begin to heal old wounds. The municipal government also became involved right away. "You have to remember, at this time we were very open to all kinds of assistance and ideas," said Janusz Dolecki, the director of Dialog who was the chairman of the city council in 1991. Neighbors in Bialystok slowly began exchanging phone numbers, giving out stickers with the police number and meeting with police. They moved on to neighborhood improvement issues. "There was no tool for punishing people for drinking alcohol in public parks and playgrounds," said Szczerbinska. "We prepared a regulation that was approved by the city council in 1993." Today Dialog is housed in a gracious 19th century palace on the grounds of a public park. Teenagers sit on the terrace between classes at the Academy for Youth Leaders established in 1994. The center provides training for young people "who are often quite alone in school with their ideas." The youth leaders have put together projects like New Year's Eve parties for poor families and their children. USAID has helped Dialog Bialystok with financial support as well as the tools to look for additional support. And the program-spurred by USAID - has replicated itself. By 1995, Dialog had been copied in 5 more cities with training assistance from Dialog Bialystok. And by the year 2000, 20 municipalities had incorporated elements of the Dialog Bialystok program into their own community programs. Dialog has moved beyond borders as well, helping Romania and Belarus build similar organizations. In February 2000, Dialog was introduced to Tirana, the capital of Albania. "There is a huge need for civic organizing and NGOs in the Balkans," according to Szczerbinska. "At an NGO meeting in Berlin last year, we discussed how graduates of Western aid programs can help foster this movement. It's clear we're in a position to do it." Back to Top   Krakow and Environmental Protection Krakow had survived a millennium of occupations under Swedes, Austrians, Germans and Russians, but the industrial pollution and neglect under Communism threatened to kill it. USAID assistance helped Krakow clean up its act, and become an environmental model for Central Europe. Krakow is Poland's most sublime city, a place where Polish history presses in on you unlike any other. As opposed to Warsaw, which was brutally destroyed by the Nazis, and then given a Stalinist uniformity by the Communists, Krakow seeps knowledge and beauty, from its 14th century university and Wawel Cathedral, where Poland's kings are buried, to the River Vistula, where according to legend a boy named Krak killed a man-eating dragon. It's hard to imagine that in 1981 Krakow looked like Pittsburgh at the turn of the last century. Statistical evidence of the city's environmental devastation was kept "top secret" by the Communist authorities, but its inhabitants knew what they were breathing and drinking was grossly polluted. (The water river was so densely polluted it no longer froze in the winter, according to some observers.) The monuments were becoming disfigured, noses and ears crumbling off sculptures, balconies becoming unhinged. Kaj Romeyko-Hurko, an environmental specialist who now works at the Environmental Education Center, a USAID sponsored library, took the most searing pictures of Krakow in the 1980s, a valley surrounded by soot-producing plants and dark, dirty winds from Silesia. "I stood up on top of one building and shot photos of the smog over the buildings of Nowa Huta, but I could barely see," he recalled. "I was afraid I would be arrested." From the 1950s until at least 1980, Krakow was dominated by industry. Krakow was a unique matrix of environmental disasters, surrounded as it was by cumbersome chemical, steel and aluminum plants. Huta Lenina produced 7 million tons of steel in the 1970s though its capacity was only 2 million, and it employed 40,000 people. The quality of the water of the Vistula river had so deteriorated that it was no longer drinkable. And emissions from antiquated coal-burning stoves and furnaces accounted for nearly half of the pollution. When the Americans made their first official visits to Krakow in 1988, the team found the environmental degradation appalling, according to Jerzy Wertz, director of Krakow's Environmental Protection Department. Krakow was indeed sharply aware of its precipitous decline, and many had already spent a decade fighting it with limited success. The transformation of 1989 finally opened the doors wide for these environmental activists. Environmental protection was a key topic of the Round Table discussions and the new times allowed the city to confront its problems fully. When Congress passed the SEED act in 1989, it included environmental assistance as one of its mandates. Krakow was easily identified as the pivotal city, and improving air and water was a tangible way for the U.S. to prove itself in its new role: USAID spent at least $27 million on Krakow in the last decade, with the cooperation of the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency – more than was spent on any other Polish city. The Krakow Urban Air Project brought the city the first air monitoring system in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991, along with a training program that led to Polish experts running and maintaining the system. It was the first time that Krakow knew the quality of its air at any given moment. There are now ten air monitoring stations at the vovoidship level. "If we have smog [developing], we know it's happening, We can see the trends and respond," said Wertz. The smog alert system has developed into an ambitious and precise network bringing together health officials, physicians, toxicologists, and university professors, and it is synergy that developed as a result of a number of USAID projects."All the assistance here was supervised and coordinated by USAID," said Wertz, a pioneer in Krakow's environmental campaign. "The cooperation here in Krakow involved financial help, professional advice, and training and seminars in different areas of environmental protection. When we made decisions, we made them together." Similarly, the Low Emissions Program has an impressive record. In the mid-80s, Krakow had about 1,200 local coal-fired boiler houses and 100,000 domestic stoves. The program made a concerted effort to help people make the transition to gas, oil and electricity, leading to improved quality of air, and over time leading to a remarkable decline in low emissions. Dangerous boiler houses were removed and replaced in dozens of sites and tens of thousands of home stoves were eliminated. The concentration of particles in the air has dropped by 60% and the levels of sulfur also dropped 65%.Poland and the U.S. government had a strong partnership in the last decade, sturdy enough to withstand one $10 million disaster, what former Ambassador Nicholas Rey calls "the biggest and most embarrassing failure the U.S. had in Poland in the 1990s." The construction of a desulfurization mechanism to Skawina Thermal Power Plant in Krakow never worked for myriad, complicated reasons. Jerzy Wertz recalled, "When it didn't work, we were absolutely shocked." In 1998, the Government of Poland, Ministry of Environment (MOE) and the United States Government decided that further continuation of this project would not lead to the expected results. MOE and USAID jointly decided that the remaining amount of money – $5 million will be used to support certain policy and institutional reforms mitigating global climate change and the purchase of American environmental and energy efficiency equipment to be installed in the Krakow region and other parts of Poland.Krakow's Regional Environmental Education Centre (REEC), an NGO that has received assistance from USAID since 1995, is the repository for every drop of regional environmental information. This tiny hub is essentially a walk-up apartment so filled with books that each shelf is bowed. Yet many evenings it is full of college students, hunched over a rickety table. The Center has also been charged with the highly successful Blue Thumb public awareness program. Six to seven thousand children participate in the clubs, which help them learn about the importance of saving water. The Krakow water festival, replete with family activities such as the creation of the "Vistula of your Dreams", has become a well-known, well-attended event. The Krakow Air/Water Technical Exchange Program supported the REECs "Blue Thumb" program and provided technical assistance to the Upper Raba River Basin to maintain clean drinking water for the residents of Krakow. And under the rubric of USAID's Local Government Partnership Program, more than a dozen gminas got together and financed their own comprehensive water protection program, an innovative idea in Poland. Nearly 2,500 people in Krakow alone were trained by USAID's Local Environmental Management Project in the areas of strategic planning, project financing, bidding, waste water management and public outreach among others."We went from being one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet to a model for other cities," said Miroslaw Gaweda, director of REEC. "It makes you think anything is possible." Back to Top

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