MATIO Foundation was founded by two people of good will in Cracow.
Our Foundation?s initiator was Paweł Wójtowicz, whose child had died from cystic fibrosis. He was the one to register the Foundation at the end of 1996. The project came into being in March 1997. The full name of our Foundation is as follows: Foundation for help Cystic Fibrosis Sufferers and their Families MATIO (Polish Cystic Fibrosis Foundation MATIO). Our legal status, goals and principles are enclosed in the Foundation?s Statute(in Polish).
MATIO Foundation is an independent organization which points towards helping children and their families who are suffering from this incurable sickness. The Foundation intends to cooperate with all research and development centers in Poland and abroad which focus their attention on cystic fibrosis issues.

Our main objectives are:

• educating the public, the sick and their families to increase awareness about mucoviscidosis,
• helping the sick with buying required medicine and rehabilitation equipment,
• organizing and financing home care trainings for sick children?s relatives,
• financing mucoviscidosis-related publications,
• advocating increased support for comprehensive scientific research and clinical trials
• taking care of the sick and their families

Apart from Paweł Wójtowicz, the foundation?s initiators team consists of: Stanisław Sitko (Foundation?s Committee chairman), Andrzej Pietrzak (Board?s vice-chairman), Barbara Zdebska (Board?s vice-chairman), Wojciech Cichy (Foundation?s Committee member), Bożena Woźniakiewicz (Foundation?s Committee member), Adam Rakoczy (Foundation?s Committee member).

”We are hoping to fulfill all our objectives thanks to our sponsors and all people of good will. Our foundation will join forces to fight against cystic fibrosis.
We would like to offer everyone in need a glimmer of hope to show you that this illness will not drastically change your future and will not prevent you and your family from cherishing every moment of your lives.”

Stanisław Sitko

The idea of setting up a foundation came up in 1995, a year after death of my beloved son. What is more, our foundation is named after our child: ?MATIO?. When suffering after this loss I started to understand all sick children and their parents.
One of the main goals of our foundation was to create an independent organization that would support all people tested by illness and would unite all families that have to struggle with cystic fibrosis. Other foundation?s important task was to educate the public about the importance and scale of this phenomenon and to make people aware of the fact that cystic fibrosis is not only a problem of the sick but also of all healthy CF gene carriers, who are unaware of this fact and may get to know about it in the most cruel and unpleasant way, when losing their babies.
The first attempts to register our foundation were made in 1995 and the project came into being in March 1997. You may ask us, what where we doing before that? For over a year foundation?s members have been trying to register this project and convince the authorities to support our idea. The rest of the time was spent on reaching people who would be as enthusiastic towards the foundation as we are. I am really glad to say that we fulfilled all of our objectives. However, it was hard sometimes. At the very beginning we had to learn how to organize our own strategy of action, what should we do to find some sponsors. Nevertheless, we firmly believe that there are many people of good will among us, and thanks to our mutual determination we will be able to acquire all means that will help us to fulfill sick children?s needs. I wish this foundation would give you everything that my son did not have.

Paweł Wójtowicz