Polonia Global Fund

PGF kept pretty good track of its site visitors throughout its history.

Here’s a snap shot of what occured before the old PGF website went off-line.

2004 Statistics

226,063 Visitors
143 Countries
An average of 2 WebPages were viewed by each visitor. The average visitor spent over 4 minutes per visit

2003 Statistics

148,112 Visitors
127 Countries
An average of 3 WebPages were viewed by each visitor. The average visitor spent nearly 5 minutes per visit.

2002 Statistics

63,600 Unique Visitors
112 Countries
An average of 5 WebPages were viewed by each visitor. The average visitor spent over 4 minutes perr visit.

Countries

People from the following countries were visitors to the old PGF site:

Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Cocos Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote D’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kingdom of Cambodia, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldavia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Niger, Niue, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (U.S.), Yugoslavia, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Many people have asked, ‘What happened to Polonia Global Fund.’

Back in late winter 2005 PGF pulled down its website.

This was done for several reasons.

• The first was that it was just getting too expensive to run and maintain. PGF did not have a huge funding or financial support base. Several generous donations, as well as the commitment of our directors, made things happen. Eventually the costs outpaced the support.
• The second reason was that managing the website had become a tedious process. We used FrontPage to manage the old PGF site. Each new article and news story had to be input from scratch. The FrontPage code had to be cleaned up. It took tons of hours to maintain which was not effective in cost-benefit terms.
• The third and really overriding reason was that the combination of the first two factors took away time from getting anything meaningful done. How could we enable and enhance our platforms while fully engrossed in website maintenance and cost.

Now the website was certainly effective in promoting the PGF message and program platforms. The number of visitors and the time they spent at the site spoke to that effectiveness. It was also sad that the positive offerings of the PGF website were lost.

PGF had a corresponding blog started in early 2002. I guess we were early adopters? We’ve decided to rebuild the PGF site using WordPress blogging technology.

Our Co-chair, Mr. James Konicki, has generously donating the hosting for the blog. In the near future we will port the articles and features from the PGF site to this blog.

Stay tuned…

Back in August I promised an update. What an update it’s been.

PGF ended up serving over 63,600 unique visitors in 2002. What’s really amazing is that the average visitor spent over four (4) minutes on the site viewing almost 5 pages of data and information.

We’ve just completed our third major site redesign. I hope you enjoy it and find your way around easily. The intent of the redesign is to focus on our unique themes – our goals, mission and values. We want you to understand what we’re about. We also want to bring you all the information you need.

Now I should finish my thoughts from August…

I tend to hear the ‘think globally act locally’ cliché a little less than I used to. We obviously need local activities, charity, events, perspective. At the same time we need to think big. Dream the dream on a global scale. It is the seed for wholesale change in the way we interact as people, families, communities, and nations.

If there anything positive in the Columbia tragedy, it is what the crew represented. The Columbia’s crew represented all of us well. Their varied backgrounds, religions, skin color, and accents helped us in defining them as people. The marvelous dynamic was that they all worked together…without animosity or bitterness…in the pursuit of science and human relationship.

Yes, I think we need to be more like them. We need to retain the best of what is within each of our families, cultures, and heritage and to bring those attributes to the table locally, nationally and globally.

The idea of a platform… That was it. It answered our needs and would open the door for others faced with the same challenge – using their resources to do good in ways only they could imagine or design.

We adopted the word Polonia as part of our name. The word is derived from the Polish language root word ‘pole’ meaning a field or platform. As our chairperson has said, we do not want to be the tallest tree in the field or the biggest building – we would much rather be the platform on which good works are based.

Our platform idea allows those who want to direct their funding into a particular outcome to design a program that meets their requirements. We provide the support to bring their vision to reality.

We designed nine specific platforms for a start. They include platforms for children, families, seniors, education, learning, dialog, sports, the arts, and our soon to be announced tenth platform in wellness.

In my next installment, Think globally act locally – the cliche must end.

In the past few days I’ve had a few people asking me about the origin of PGF. Not the where and when, but the why. Over the next few posts I’ll attempt to explain a little.

About 8 years ago some friends and I were invited to a meeting. A city school district was going to do away with foreign language programs. At the same time the district was closing out its desegregation program. We were asked to represent the community, speak to the school board and come up with a plan. We saved the language programs right away. We also worked on a comprehensive plan to turn district schools into world schools. Several K-8 schools would be converted into magnet schools. Each would represent a study in a particular culture. The schools would feed into a U.N. High School. District students would be prepared for achievement on a global scale.

Unfortunately the larger plan never went beyond the Board and administration of the district. I’m sure you can imagine well integrated city schools turning out positive, dynamic and educated young people with a global vision. Unfortunately others could not.

For my colleagues and I, this was not our first or last community service mission. We involved ourselves regularly in civic projects and charitable ventures. What we did learn was that people with dynamic ideas of their own do not fit well into organizations that already have specific missions and values. You can work to the best of your ability and donate funds to keep it going, but you cannot reinvent (nor would I want to reinvent) that charity.

For me, the years spent in not-for-profit financial management, the years serving on Boards of Directors, the years of learning were my street education.

Well after a few too many nights of getting together with my fiends, philosophizing, reasoning and talking into the wee hours, an idea formed. The idea of a platform?