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Piast Institute Creates a Website to Help Poles in Michigan Find Cheap and Free Healthcare, Legal Aid, and Scholarships

April 05, 2009

Hamtramck, MI - The Piast Institute, a national institute for Polish and Polish-American affairs, in response to the economic crisis and the growing number of people lacking health insurance, created an internet database of places where people can find free or low cost medical and legal aid. “Many people are not aware of the resources available to them,” says Virginia Skrzyniarz, the co-founder and Executive Vice President of the Piast Institute. “Therefore, we decided to consult a variety of sources and compile a list of places offering free and low cost medical help and make it easily available to people in our area. Now all of this information is just a click away.”

The website, available at www.pomoc.piastinstitute.org, features a list of free and low cost medical facilities, but also includes places offering affordable legal aid as well as links to organizations offering scholarships tailored to the Polish community. “Finding scholarships online can be frustrating,” says Dominik Stecula, the Director of Research at Piast Institute and the creator of the website. “I know that from my own experience. Compiling a list of places offering scholarships and making it easily available will come as a relief to a great number of Polish and Polish American students.”

One important aspect of the website created by Piast is that the site is currently only available in Polish. “We do not want people who don’t speak Polish to feel offended,” says Virginia Skrzyniarz. “We are working on the English version as well. But in this case we felt that the first priority was the people with limited English skills for whom this information would be more difficult to find.”

It is important to understand that the website is a work in progress and Piast Institute intends to keep adding resources continuously. “We urge anybody who has information about free and low cost healthcare or legal advice to contact us so that we can add such resources to the website,” says Stecula. “Additionally, we encourage people to leave feedback on the website with comments about different places, so that we know which institutions are reliable and which ones are not,” concludes Dominik Stecula. The institutions listed on the website are not affiliated with the Institute, so Piast advises all users to call before making a trip to a certain clinic or institution.

For more information on the website, please contact Virginia Skrzyniarz, Executive Vice President, at 313-733-4535 or by e-mail at skrzyniarz@piastinstitute.org