Some of you may remember that some time ago I tried (and I really tried hard!) to pronounce some basic Polish words without getting tongue-tied. Have I been successful? Well, to be honest… I failed.

However, I´m glad to report progress on the culinary field. I became a frequent buyer at a Polish deli next to our office in Frankfurt, Germany and have tried their whole (!) range of dumplings. But, of course, not only have I made progress, but so has FedEx in Poland. Just recently we hosted a media event in Warsaw, talking about the successful integration of the Polish shipping company Opek into our global network.

Did you know that our presence in Poland today is stronger than ever? We have 26 weekly international flights to and from Warsaw, Katowice and Gdansk and operate 44 stations across the country. More than 1,300 team member's work for FedEx in Poland and an additional 1,400 contracted drivers are delivering shipments to our customers. And meanwhile we have more than 1,000 FedEx branded vehicles on the roads.

The expansion of the business comes at a time of dynamic foreign trade. According to the Central Statistical Office of Poland, exports from Poland increased by 6.2 percent in the first quarter of 2014, reaching the overall of value 39.6 billion EUR (more than 50 billion USD). For the same period, imports rose by 2.6 percent reaching 39.2 billion EUR.

But FedEx would not be FedEx if there wasn´t also a strong commitment to social responsibility in the region. This year, we started to support a project for underprivileged children with the United Way Poland Foundation. The project aims to help children from underprivileged families by protecting them from social exclusion and encouraging them to play an active role in social and cultural life. A local youth club has already been opened and it´s great to see how the kids are having great fun learning and playing.

I´m very much looking forward to seeing these children grow, to seeing our business grow - and ideally also to seeing my Polish language skills improve. At least, there´s one sentence I can almost pronounce flawlessly: "Nie mówię dobrze po polsku" meaning "My Polish is not very good."

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