Polish diaspora all around the world finally has an access to the list of organisations which help them stay in touch with their home country’s heritage and current affairs. During the press conference, Jan Dziedziczak, the government plenipotentiary for the Polish Diaspora and Poles abroad, presented an updated database.

According to the comprehensive list, there are nearly 9,000 organisations that bring together Poles and Polish-descended people, that operate in 115 countries.

“About 20 million Poles live [outside of Poland]. That means one-third of the Polish national community lives outside our country. For our motherland, they make for great social capital, and should be used in the best way possible,” said Mr Dziedziczak.

The largest Polish diaspora lives in the United States, with 10 million people admitting to Polish roots. But there are large communities of Polish people, either recent immigrants or even second- and third-generation, who live in Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Lithuania, Iceland, and also in Ukraine.

Many Poles, a nation known for its patriotic disposition, try to maintain their national identity and links to the Old Country even once they have become fully integrated with the local communities, sometimes over many generations. According to Mr Dziedziczak, the large number of Polish organisations, be their social, cultural, or religious, and active in more than half of all the countries around the World, “is an impressive capital that the national community of Poles around the world has at its disposal, outside the borders of the Republic of Poland.”

The most recent survey on Polish organisations operating abroad was prepared by Statistic Poland, the government agency tasked with collecting statistical and census data.