On June 11th, we visited the PCPM Education Centre in Warsaw, where together with 8 Goldman Sachs volunteers and 30 students, we built a grand total of 13 insect hotels! The PCPM Education Centre runs classes for children from Ukraine, combining schoolwork with activities that help them settle into their new surroundings.
We kicked things off with a short, easygoing chat about why pollinating insects even need houses, and then the whole crew got to building – power drills and a whole lot of enthusiasm included.
Learning by doing
Instead of reading about pollinating insects in a textbook, the kids got to see and feel firsthand what working for nature actually looks like – from screwing the boards together, through arranging the filling materials inside, all the way to the moment the finished hotel found its spot outside. For many of them, this was their very first chance to do something like this, and you could really see how happy they were.
The kids were eager from minute one – firing off questions during the talk, listening closely, and jumping in to help each other and the facilitators alike. Learning by doing like this tends to stick a lot better than theory alone, since the kids get to see a direct result of their own work – a real object they built themselves, one that will actually be useful to insects.
Three languages at one table
Since the workshop brought together children from Ukraine, teachers from the PCPM Education Centre, and Goldman Sachs volunteers – some of whom spoke only English – building the hotels turned into a conversation happening simultaneously in three languages: Polish, Ukrainian, and English. It sounds like it could have been chaos, but it really wasn’t!
The group managed just fine with gestures, live step-by-step demonstrations, and help from the teachers and supervisors with translating along the way. The kids handled most of the assembly themselves, and the volunteers were most useful for the “wait, what comes next?” moments.
Corporate volunteering as a lesson about nature
Workshops like this one show just how well corporate volunteering can pair with environmental education for young people. For the Goldman Sachs volunteers, it’s a chance to step away from their desks and spend a day in a completely different role – not the expert, but someone learning alongside the kids and supporting them step by step.
For the children, it’s an opportunity to spend time with adults from outside school who are giving them their time for free, and to understand what caring for the environment actually looks like in a hands-on, tangible way – not from a textbook, but with a power drill in hand. That combination makes it a win for everyone involved, and the lessons about nature tend to stick around a lot longer than they would after an ordinary class.
Why insect hotels matter
Insect hotels might look at first glance like small garden decorations, but they serve a very concrete purpose – giving shelter to wild pollinators, like solitary bees and ladybugs, that are finding it increasingly hard to find a natural place to live in urban spaces. Pollinating insects are responsible for pollinating a large share of both cultivated and wild-growing plants, and their populations worldwide keep declining due to habitat loss and pesticide use.
Building your own insect hotel gives kids not just a fun hands-on activity, but a real lesson in how even small actions can genuinely support local nature.
Thanks
Thank you to the students and staff of the PCPM Education Centre and to the Goldman Sachs volunteers for a day full of commitment and great energy. The trilingual communication, mutual support, and enthusiasm of the whole group showed that working together for nature can bring people together across language and cultural barriers.
