Press Releases 2006
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Ms. Janina Ochojska |
Poland’s Ochojska Named Alumni of the Month at the State Department
3 March 2006Janina Ochojska of Poland is an alumna of the 1996 International Visitor Leadership Program and is committed to improving the lives of others.
Ms. Ochojska was born in 1955 in Gdansk, Poland, and raised in a poor coal miner’s family. As a young child she contracted polio and spent most of her childhood in hospitals and convalescent houses. Although the disease significantly affected her physical development, it did not hinder her spiritual and intellectual growth.
In 1980 she graduated from the University of Torun in astronomy and started work as a research fellow at the Copernicus Center for Astronomy, Polish Academy of Science. Her heroic fight against polio magnified her awareness of human suffering and the need to support other disabled people in their struggle for independence and self-realization.
In 1984 she went to France to undergo a very complicated surgery to alleviate the effects of polio. While in France she had an opportunity to meet activists from the EquiLibre Foundation, who were organizing aid convoys to Poland. After her return to Poland she took an active part in coordinating foreign aid and building the new democratic movement. When Poland became a young democracy in 1989 she started to build a new humanitarian movement as well.
In 1994, Ms. Ochojska transformed a Polish branch of the EquiLibre Foundation, which had been operating in Poland since 1992, into the Polish Humanitarian Organization (PHO). She now serves as the President of the PHO.
In October 1992 she participated in a French humanitarian convoy to Bosnia and was shocked by the tragic circumstances of the war victims there. In response, she returned to Poland to organize the first Polish convoy of humanitarian aid to Sarajevo. Since then, Ochojska has always been on the front line of humanitarian aid to victims, realizing the PHO’s mission to provide help to victims of wars and natural disasters home and abroad. Thanks to her charisma, extraordinary abilities, and perseverance, the PHO has become one of the most recognized humanitarian organizations in Poland.
Under Ms. Ochojska’s leadership, the PHO was one of the first international organizations to open a field hospital in Afghanistan during the war against the Taliban, and has been one of the most active organizations in Chechnya for many years. Through the PHO, Ms. Ochojska played major role in organizing relief efforts after widespread flooding struck Poland in 1999 and 2001. Ms. Ochojska and the PHO also focus on humanitarian education, which serves to introduce values of cultural acceptance and cooperation in youth. Their “A Złoty for Afghan Children” program raised $100,000 among Polish school children for the Afghan relief effort.
Ms. Ochojska was inspired by the nonprofit organizations she visited in the U.S. as part of the International Visitors Leadership Program. After visiting a center that collects donated used clothes and appliances, Ms. Ochojska founded a similar organization, Drugiej Reki: www.bdr.org.pl (Second Hand Bank). She also went on to introduce the first website in Poland to support organizations through online donation payments (www.pajacyk.pl).
