Father Krzysztof Czermak, Episcopal Vicar for Mission in the Diocese of Tarnów, writes about the effects of the "Good Coins" collection in the Diocese of Tarnów.
Included in this somewhat odd title is a real conversion rate of "not many pennies worth." The saying "penny to penny" has, as you can see, its justification not only in the lives of frugal people and those who reject all wastefulness.
On Sunday, October 20, 2024, as a diocese we took another action to help the missions by building deep wells. The endeavor was organized for the second time in cooperation with the Dehonian Missions, who have already financed dozens of wells "dug" by our missionaries in Chad. This year's assistance concerned (as last year) the wells to be built by our missionary in that African country, Father Stanislaw Worwa.
Those kilograms included in the title are, to illustrate, just four buckets of pennies, which, thanks to our reliable volunteers from the Tarnów Missionary Volunteers: Kamila, Artur and Tymek, became banknotes of concrete value. There is a lot to thank them for, because with this, as it turns out valuable "iron", we had to go twice to Rzeszów to stand in line at the bank, and then machine-count it. By the way, I would like to thank the priests in the field who acceded to my request and, showing great empathy, exchanged a total of several tons of pennies. They had, as you can see, their ways, and probably without avoiding services at the bank (as did our volunteers) or taking other measures, they made the pennies into fat denominations.
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The Dehonian Fathers, proposing to cooperate with us in this venture, called it a "Good Coins" collection. Which coins are good? It turns out that all of them, including the "bad" ones. In fact, it wasn't just coins that were at issue, banknotes as well. So we collected everything - Polish and foreign, what is in circulation and what has already come out of it. Those who, as volunteers, engaged in the needed segregation of the donation made, were able to recall the aluminum coins of the communist period and beyond.
So let's show the folded coins in kilograms. The current Polish pennies alone in circulation were more than 5 tons. To this must be added about 1.5 tons of all other coins, among which former Polish zlotys (i.e., those "bad" coins) reigned supreme. A significant weight of this was the Euro "pennies" (euro cents), or from the same category American cents and English pounds.
The sale of old banknotes from dozens of countries around the world, and especially the negotiation of their price, was handled by volunteers of the Secretariat for Foreign Missions of the Priests of the Sacred Heart.
Today we know that the campaign brought in revenue of more than PLN 191,000. For the Polish pennies in circulation alone, a sum of almost PLN 120,000 was collected.
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The previous collection (of old cell phones, smartphones and laptops) brought an income of PLN 54,370, which was also earmarked for the construction of 4 wells in Chad, on the grounds of the mission led by Father Stanislaw Worwa. The October 2024 campaign will ensure the construction of some 13 wells, depending on the technology of their construction and the structure of the water collection facilities (in Africa, so-called water towers are often built). Generally speaking, "we gave it a go," and I congratulate those who participated in it.
To all those who approached the action with kindness and responsibility, I want to say that by this contribution, which objectively materially cost them nothing, they contributed to a great gift for our brothers in Africa. In order to visualize the size of the gift, I suggest that we move with our imagination to the land of Chad and think that with a bucket on our head we have to walk a few dozen, or maybe more, meters to a water reservoir, from which we will draw water for the whole family, but we will not be sure that the water is drinkable.
The Diocese of Tarnów, thanks to its missionaries in Africa, has already built 201 deep wells funded by various entities. These include missionary carolers and various donors - including the Dehonian Fathers. A large role is played by the Tarnów Diocese's Missionary Work fund and the fund obtained from the sale of waste paper and plastic caps. As for the latter, let me happily remind you that the campaign to collect them is still ongoing.
Fr. Krzysztof Czermak
episcopal vicar for the missions of the Diocese of Tarnów
