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This article is warmly dedicated to the late Julius Green, past colleague of mine when I served at Community Access, Inc., and eternal friend. Julius was always fondly supportive of my sense of adventure as well as my advocacy activities.

It was a cold, dark and snowy night when I met with members of "Open the Doors" in Krakow, the southern cultural capital of Poland in the former Eastern bloc, to discuss the possibility of having them featured in New York City Voices.

"Open the Doors" is a World Health Organization initiative. It is comprised of 30 members with an executive board. The main goal of this three-year-old consumer group is running anti-stigma campaigns with the assistance of "Open the Doors" media officer Danuta.

Legal toleration of any civil rights movements and the open acceptance of emancipation are relatively progressive considering Poland's past Communist history. Communism fell here in 1989.

"Open the Doors" also organizes psycho-education conferences with professionals and grassroots socialization projects. For example, they helped me out with gifts of silver and flatware when I relocated.

When interviewed, I asked them, "What kind of doors do you open?" Through a translator for Marcin, the group's president, fellow member Jaroslaw replied, "We want to build a partnership between our group in Central Europe with similar groups in the United States. We want others to know that we exist, we also support people and we can help each other. Mental illness is treatable and like the objectives of Awakenings meetings we read about in New York City Voices, we can live non-violently and successfully with mental illness in the community."

I have been a part of "Open the Doors" for over two years and feel the group is like family.

Although the biweekly meetings are held in Polish, several of the members are enthusiastically multilingual. They have had traditional Polish Christmas Eve parties each year called "Wigilia" and we go out to chat after meetings.

Gosia, the psychiatric nurse who attends the meetings, invited us all to her wedding. Her husband is a psychiatrist who works in the same day treatment center where the group holds its meetings.

"Open the Doors" is eager to create an ongoing dialogue with people like you, and such friendships can be developed very reasonably.