Project "Intergenerational garden" - Part I

Cześć everyone,

At the moment, one of the big projects of FIYE and our partner Senior Wigor is the “Intergenerational Garden” project, financed by FIO - Mazowsze Lokalnie. You may have seen pictures on Facebook or Instagram but what exactly is it about?

The origin of the project
It all started with the Mazowsze Lokalnie programme, which offers grants every year for projects in the region of Mazowsze. Our partner Senior Wigor (where I volunteer) being so active, we thought it would be a great idea to run a project with and for them. After discussions and observations, we decided to gather the seniors and the young adults of Pułtusk in a common project: building DIY garden furniture out of pallets. Thus, there were several unused pallets at Senior Wigor and a lack of garden chairs and tables for the seniors during summer, hence the objective of our project. Furthermore, our association is often in need of a place to organize events for the young people of Pułtusk, such as language cafes or cultural events and this new sitting area could be used for those meetings, as well as for intergenerational meetings in the future. This is indeed a project that aims at creating a dialogue and exchanges of skills between two generations.

So after discussing with Senior Wigor, we created an intergenerational team, composed of seniors and young adults, the Pułtusk Six, to lead and organize the project: Pani Wacława and Pani Wanda (two seniors from Senior Wigor), Kuba and Iga (two of our mentors), Lyubava (a Russian local student and volunteer) and me.

Our application got accepted in the first round and in May, Pani Wacława, Lyubava, Sylwia and I went to the second round in the city of Ostrołeka, to present our idea in front of a jury.

For this occasion, I learned to introduce our team in Polish and Pani Wacława presented Senior Wigor, before Lyuba finished by presenting our project in details. We also showed them how we wanted the garden to be with a huge collage that I created with the help of Marie and the types of crafts the seniors love to create. 

We were very proud and excited after the presentation and we must have sounded convincing, as mid may, we received the good news! Our project got the financing! 😊

The preparation of the project
After our project got accepted, we had to prepare the four workshops, during which we intend to build the following pieces of furniture: two tables out of pallets, three benches with back out of pallets, a compost, up to 10 flower pots made with apple boxes, bird houses and decorations: pillows, coasters, lanterns, etc.

So we had to advertise our workshops, recruit young people, buy the material, plan the programme of the workshops, and so on.

Workshop number 1 (Tuesday the 13th of June)

On the 13th of June, it was finally time for our first workshop. We cut, sanded and treated our future pallet benches and tables with a special product and sanded some more to turn apple boxes into flower pots. It was hard work but we were very proud of the results!

Workshop number 2 (Tuesday the 20th of June)

During the second workshop, our intergenerational group gathered again in the garden of Senior Wigor to paint and decide the shape of our pallet tables and benches. We also painted the apple boxes that will turn into flower pots and started sewing the green pillows that will go on the benches. Have a look!

Informal meetings

Inbetween our workshops, we also try to organize informal meetings at Senior Wigor to continue the work that hasn’t been finished during the workshops, for instance sanding pallets, treating the wood, assembling the pallets, sewing more pillows, learning how to make decorations, etc.

The third workshop will take place on the 11th of July and we will be learning about compost, creating flower pots, coasters out of magazines and finishing our garden furniture. 

Join us! Zapraszamy!

Julia