Good Factory is pleased to report that the world does not have four sides, but seven. That is the lesson we learned last weekend while taking part in a remarkable event hosted at the Seven Gardens farm in Łowicz Wałecki.

The festival “Seven Sides of the World – Encounters on Travel” taught us not only this new geographic rule but, above all, offered a unique opportunity to meet outstanding experts on international affairs, create a space for exchanging ideas, and attempt to define one of the seven directions in which our unstable, uncertain, and ambiguous world is headed.

Such important conversations—about changes in the most volatile corners of the globe, about access to truth and how reporters describe it, about the need for change in humanitarian aid—could not have taken place in a better atmosphere.

During the panel on saving the world, Mateusz Gasiński from Good Factory said that the humanitarian sector needs to redefine itself from scratch, and that the U.S. president’s decision to freeze international aid funds might paradoxically help in this process. 

“For the first time in decades, many big players in the humanitarian world felt what it’s like to be hungry. And when you have little, you begin to use what you do have more effectively,” he explained.

Aid projects focused on achieving set goals often concentrated only on ticking boxes and delivering statistics, not on the real needs of real people. As you know, Good Factory has been repeating like a mantra for years that people, not numbers, must come first—and we remain accountable for the effectiveness of our work first and foremost to you.

The discussions with an engaged and thoughtful audience left us returning from Łowicz Wałecki with our heads full of ideas. We also returned with an empty van—the same one we had used to bring NIKA olive oil, produced by those under our care in Greece. The participants enjoyed it so much that on the way back, our trunk carried nothing but air. On behalf of our beneficiaries on the island of Lesbos, we thank you for this support as well.

Among this exceptional audience were many of you who have been creating good with us for years. Thank you for every meeting and every conversation at the Good Factory tent. You cannot imagine how deeply we felt the need for encounters like these. Our gratitude also goes to the organizers of the Seven Sides of the World Festival for bringing us together in such a beautiful way. And we could not have been there without the invaluable support of Michał Żakowski, to whom we bow deeply. Thank you!