Hello!
Where does your name come from? What do you do? Maybe you're a sect? Such are the questions troubling the heads of people we talk to and probably you can't get rid of them questions either. Well, many attempted to uncover the nature and principles governing the Association for Impossible Measures "Motyka"; so far everyone has failed.

With "Motyka" it's much like with its name: hoe (in Polish "motyka") - the farmer's tool. It's hard to guess what it is. If we show you a three-pronged tool with a handle (for that's what we think is a hoe) somebody might object: "Well right, but that's a 'graca'" (another, regional term for the same tool), while a person from another corner of the country will say "Bugger, that's a 'kopaczka' and no 'motyka'". And it should stay this way.

At any rate, six years ago this device inspired us to found the association. Since then we're "trying to reach the stars", sometimes fast and agile, sometimes slower cause something appears in the way.

"Motyka" consists of about a good dozen of people engaged in realising projects as well as quite a number of "Motyka" sympathisers and friends- people turning up at events and supporting us in different ways. All this time we worked almost exclusively on the principles of voluntary commitment. Only since this year's September one of our volunteers is employed on an official basis, thus allowing for regular office hours (9am - 4pm).

What do we really care for? What do we do?

Currently:

• We realise Polish-German, trinational and multinational exchange programmes for young people aged between 16 and 26,
• We send volunteers abroad within the EVS programme,
• We offer  summer workcamps in Germany,
• We train student volunteers and help them getting commited in NGOs in Toruń,
• We promote the idea of sustainable development and fair trade.

We cooperate with many organisation and institutions in Poland and abroad. The longest and best developed contacts we have with Germany and Ukraine.
We're dreaming of a domicile in the countryside - a house where we can make creative, impossible initiatives come true and extend our actitivies.
Have a look around our home page and you'll see what we've already done, who we Motykans are, what we're doing now and what we're still up to. Then drop us a line, give us a call, pay us a visit. We're waiting for you and you can always come around for a cup of tea.

The Club of The Open Door

Like in every Polish city a great amount of young disabled people, who only have limited contact to other people of their age, is living also in Torun. These people do not have the possibility to take part in social-cultural life without the help of their contemporaries. Reasons for that frequently are architectonic barriers, which make it more difficult to independently use cultural possibilities etc. – or sometimes even make it impossible. Disabled people are furthermore faced with social barriers as for instance a lacking understanding for their needs and the “normal worlds” lack of tolerance.

As a result of the difficulties, which are affecting disabled people and their families, a group of people founded the Youth Integration Group and the Club of The Open Door. People assume, that the club's day of foundation is 27th of November 1997. On that day a group of young people met in the building of Caritas and decided to henceforth regularly meet every Friday.

Days and weeks have passed. And now, 8 years later, the Club of The Open Door continues with its integration work. Within the last years the group went through different moments. The care assistants as well as the members have changed. All in all, 70 people were part of the club during this period of time - most of them being students, pupils as well as graduates. Among them were employed as well as unemployed people. The majority of these people comes from Torun or from the surroundings of Torun. But we also have members coming from cities close to Torun, like Golub-Dobrzyń, Kowalewo or Chełmża.

In the course of these years we manages to arrange some ercursions to Ciechocinek, Górzno and Płock, which lasted several days, and organised a one-day trip to Gdansk. The last excursion was a collective trip together with the club. We spend this time in Jazdżówki in Masuria where we went canoeing and sailing. We also went to the theater, to the cinemas, to concerts and visited museums.

The groundwork of our club's activities is created by the regular Friday Meetings. Due to these meetings the disabled people get the possibility to meet with other disabled people and to realise their ambitious ideas together with the volunteers. During these meetings we play integration games, plan our projects for the next days and months, share experiences or just chat and gossip with each other. From time to time we are also celebrating, e.g. Christmas parties etc. Furthermore we also took part in computer courses, theater and journalism workshops concerning human rights and interpersonal relationships and in lots of other projects. Twice we carried out the campaign „Rollstuhl“ (wheel chair), which sets one's sights to showing with wich barriers – architectonic and mental – disabled people are faced with in our city. Main aim of our actions is to reduce interpersonal barriers.

Currently the meetings of the Club of The Open Door are taking place every friday from 85 to 7 p.m. in Primary School Nr. 2 (Szkola Podstawowa Nr. 2), 17 Targowa St.
Zurzeit finden die Treffen des Klubs der Offenen Tür jeden Freitag von 17 bis 19 in der Grundschule 2, Targowastraße 17 statt.

A warm welcome to everyone!

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Financing of our initiative

Our initiative is financed by different money sources. The main sources are  Deutsch-Polnisches Jugendwerk (DPJW), of which Motyka is a central office, and the program YOUTH of the EU. In the year 2005 we additionally got financial allowances from the foundation „Hilfe für die Polen im Osten“, the foundation „Erziehung für Demokratie“, the foundation „Polnische Stiftung für Kinder und Jugendliche“, from the endowment fund for citizen's initiatives and from the township Torun.

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