Dokumentumok
Cím:
Annual Report 1999: HACD
A kiadás helye:
Budapest
A kiadás éve:
2000
Kiadó:
Közösségfejlesztők Egyesülete
Nyelv:
angol
Tárgyszavak:
éves jelentés, HACD
Állomány:
Közösségfejlesztők Egyesülete alapdokumentumok
Megjegyzés:
Raktári jelzet:
E

Annual Report 1999
The Association for Community Development is 10 years old

The work of our association had two significant streams in 1998: 1. Events were organised in honour of the 10th anniversary of the association, 2. The association was strengthened.

Our sponsors’ confidence in us brought good results in terms of developing the staff and our professional activities, and also in terms of involving new partners and sponsors.

Unfortunately, however, it is also true that building up the support mechanism of community development in Hungary is a long and slow process:
- the process of the accreditation of professional training is even slower than expected,
- our fundraising activities meet success abroad, but only partially in Hungary. We still have not managed to obtain governmental/local governmental funding, because civil organisations continue to lack serious Hungarian sources, (and this will soon entail the stagnation of the sector.)
It can be said that the outcomes of the organisation’s activity have come up to our preliminary expectations, but the HACD continues to be in need of foreign funding.

1. The Association for Community Development is 10 years old
We celebrated our 10th anniversary with the help of the PHARE Democracy Micro-Programme.

In Autumn 1999 we organised 6 regional conferences promoting community development. The HACD celebrated its 10th anniversary with this series of conferences. The conferences were attended by higher-educational teachers and volunteers interested in community development, local council representatives, and professionals interested in regional development. A total of 300 people attended the conferences. Everyone was given a copy of the floppy disk ”The Minimum You Should Know about Community Development” as well as a copy of the special issue of the PAROLA, which deals with the results of the past 10 years. The floppy contains introductory materials and case studies of local projects. The Civil Radio had organised 5 discussions for the event, which were distributed on tape.

The 6 regional conferences were as follows:
29 October 1999: “10 Years in Human-Centred Local Development”
10 November, Oroszlány: “Tasks and Opportunities in Local/Community Development Facing
Civil Organisations around the Millennium”
30 November, Görcsöny: “Human-Centred Regional Development”
7 December, Szolnok: “Opportunities for Citizens in Local Development” – The Present and
Future of Community Development
8 December, Nyíregyháza: “Human-Centred Local Development”
15 December, Kunbábony: “10 Years of Community Development”
Besides the general key-lectures, during the conferences the local citizens (volunteers and local council representatives) introduced current and completed community development processes. The ways of further co-operation were outlined each time.


2. The Strengthening of the Association for Community Development

In 1999, the Hungarian Association for Community Development carried on strengthening the organisation, and it also kept on preparing for the Small Grants Programme, which is considered to be of strategic importance. At the same time, significant steps were taken in order to develop and promote community development as a profession. It has been justified that, in case it has a paid staff, the association is capable of performing much more, much more planned, and much more co-ordinated activities.

a, Organising long-term funding
In accordance with our strategic plan, in 1999 our funding policy was characterised by the organisation of longer-term, general purposes grants instead of project-to-project financing.
The 20 years of community development in Hungary, its organic development, its results and well-founded middle-term plan won 3 significant sponsors for the cause of community development in Hungary in the past two years: the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and a private donor. The grants of these organisations cover periods of 2 or 3 years, and they have already increased the capacity of our organisation. But since the amount of funding money available in Hungary has not changed, we will have to carry on with our fund-raising activities in the circle of foreign sponsors until the programmes of the EU will take over. (We would like to note that, in accordance with our expectations, the pre-accession programmes do contain community development elements (e.g. SAPARD Programme), but the number of assignments stemming from them does not bring a breakthrough in our work today).

Our strategic plan has centred its activities around a programme that can develop local action and the profession of community development at the same time. This programme is the “Local Action” Programme, which is to be advertised in March 2000.

b, “Small Grants” Programme

In order to have the Small Grants Program launched in the year of 2000, in 1999 we carried on conciliatory negotiations and were looking for partners, and we also carried on with our fundraising activities. We have got in touch with the Autonómia (Autonomy) Foundation, the Ökotárs (EcoMate) Foundation, and the Welfare Service Foundation. These foundations will take part in identifying the applicants to invite in order to attend the programme, in building up a service of professionals, and in the work of the donation committee.
We are provided the financial support of the Soros Foundation in the years of 1999 and 2000: the foundation contributes 1 million HUF to the costs of organising the programme. Unfortunately, we have not managed to persuade any Hungarian public budget organisation to sponsor the programme. Instead, we have won the support of the Mott Foundation, which provides our programme with 15.000 USD in 2000, and the Rockefeller Foundation, which provides our programme with 15.000 USD in 2000 and another 15.000 USD in 2001. The Levi Strauss Foundation also seems to be willing to support the projects of the urban youth with 5000 USD. This grant application is in progress at the moment.

c, Staff development & expansion
Our sponsors made it possible for us to change the position of our part-time administrator to full-time, and to complete it with new circles of tasks. Besides her administrative and financial tasks, the position of Andrea Purtczl has therefore been expanded by her performing administrative and accounting tasks in connection with grants.
Our association has been strengthened by a full-time community development worker as well: she is Zsuzsa Mészáros, who leads the experimental project in the Upper-Kiskunság region. Beside small regional development, another characteristic of her work is the experimentation with new ways of community economic development.

In the year of 1999 we paid special attention to the fact that the young professionals around the association (most of them our students) should receive tasks. We organised 3 interior training courses for the most active members and the leadership of the association.

3. Promoting Community Development

Further seminars
- Besides the 6 jubilee seminars promoting community development, with a youth delegation in June we attended the “Take your coffee, build your future!” international youth seminar in Patras, Greece. At the conference we introduced the Upper-Kiskunság project, and one of us gave a lecture on the need for community education.
- A seminar on the “Thinking About Democracy” programme, which is organised in the framework of the EU PEDEC-Socrates Programme, was organised in Oxford, where a member of our association gave a lecture on community development in Hungary.

PAROLA
The newsletter of our association came out four times in 1999. One issue was a special jubilee one.

Civil Radio
With the help of its staff of 120 volunteers, in 1999 the Civil Radio broadcast 2450 hours, providing almost 500 civil organisations with the opportunity to introduce themselves. The radio run 7 regular developmental/educational workshops during the year (Music Workshop, Green Belt Workshop, Lifestyles and Social Programmes Workshop, Workshop of Daily Editors, Reporters’ Workshop, which is a way of involving new volunteers, Budapest Workshop, Technical Workshop). It has launched the Civil News Network, which is meant to become the civil news agency of non-profit organisations from Budapest and the country. It has been published on the Internet in real audio version, that is, it can be received both in Hungary and abroad. The studio has been renovated, the classical music base has been expanded, and two applications for frequency have been prepared in co-operation with the Fix Radio.

Community Database
In the framework of the Intercommunity Foundation, our database regularly collects, systematises and publishes documents and information belonging to the methodology and practice of community work. The database has linked-up our organisations in a computer network, and it has solved the problem of e-mailing. It updates the Hungarian homepage of community development and publishes it at the following address: www.kkapcsolat.hu. The hardware and software needed for publishing materials from the database, and the conversion of the data into the proper format has been started.
The electronic book titled “The Minimum You Should Know about Community Development” and the electronic version of the “Thinking about Democracy” Programme have both been prepared. The database is in the process of organising and running an e-mailing list called the Civil News Network.

4. Professional Development Activities in 1999

Most important projects
- In the framework of the small regional development work performed in the Upper-Kiskunság, we carry out helping, mobilising activities in different areas in the city of Kunszentmiklós and in five surrounding villages: in Kunpeszér, Kunadacs, Tas, Szalkszentmárton, and Kunbábony (assisting local co-operation, organising computer skills courses for unemployed people, the establishment of a youth café, training and employment of community workers in each village, etc.
Regional development in the Upper-Kiskunság has arrived at the stage of small regional partnership building. This significant step in quality could not have been taken without training and mobilising local community workers.
The community development process has been started in the village of Apaj as well. Officially, the village is not part of the small region, but it is in the neighbourhood. Our association had been invited by the local council.
- Development work in the Szatmár borderland – When the necessary preparations had been done, in 1999 a community development programme was launched as a result of the co-operation of Romanians and Hungarians.
- The National Assembly of Local Youth and Children Councils took place between 1-3 October. We had had a determinant role in the preparatory activities, and three colleagues of our department undertook the responsibility of leading workshops.
With our co-operation, the Local Governmental Union for the Youth was established in the first part of the year with the participation of (adult) local council representatives.
- In the District of Kőbánya the Association of Parents in Kőbánya established 2 local groups in 1999. The Szent László Day Nursery got in touch with our association, because they wanted to develop citizen’s participation in their services – two projects are being elaborated at the moment.

Accreditation
- In 1999 community development became an optional subject accredited within the framework of further training for teachers.
- The Ministry of Education, the thematic head, has submitted the joint application of the Hungarian Institute for Culture and the Hungarian Association for Community Development for the professional accreditation of community development. The accreditation concerns both secondary-level and higher-educational training, and its evaluation is in progress.
- Several higher-educational institutions submitted their application for accrediting the tuition of community development, and the applications have been approved.

Training
The annual report of our partner organisation, the Civil College Foundation, reports on our training courses in detail. Due to its significance, however, we would like to mention the gypsy community centre programme hereby as well. The programme is supported by the Soros Foundation. We are in the process of giving 21 weekend-courses in order to prepare local community activists for identifying the needs of their communities, and for planning projects that build on these needs.
We provided professional assistance for several university/college students who wrote their thesis and did their professional practice in the area of community development.

Consultancy/Expert Advice
In 1999 there was a growing demand for our work as advisers/experts in both planning and carrying out national and county programmes.

5. International Work
In April 1999 we took part in the European Conference of the International Association for Community Development (IACD) in Edinburgh, where we introduced one of our current projects (Budapest, X. Kőbánya), the activities of the Civil Radio, and our work in the Combined European Bureau for Social Development (CEBSD).

In August 1999 we attended the World Conference of the International Community Education Association (ICEA) in Oxford, where Dr Ilona Vercseg gave a lecture.

In November 1999 we attended a conference on community economic development organised by the VIBOSO (a Belgian community development organisation, member of the CEBSD) in the European Parliament in Brussels, where a HACD study on this subject was introduced.

In April 1999 we attended the board meeting of the CEBSD in London, in June the European Region board meeting of the ICEA in Patras, and in November another board meeting of the CEBSD in Gent.

Our most important partners
· Combined European Bureau for Social Development
· International Association for Community Education
· International Association for Community Development
· Hungarian Institute for Culture
· Association for Community Development in the County of Békés
· Community Service of Vas County
· “Living-Space” Association, Komárom
· Kunszentmiklós Local Authority
· Small Regional Union of Felső-Kiskunság
· Job Centre of Bács-Kiskun County
· Association of Community Workers in the Felső-Kiskunság Region

Our sponsors in 1999
(contributions in kind - e.g. office upkeep and other running expenses - are considered as donations)
· Hungarian Parliament
· Rockefeller Brothers Fund
· Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
· Soros Foundation
· National Employment Fund
· National Youth Fund
· Hungarian Institute for Culture
· ICEA
· PHARE Democracy Micro Programme
Financial Statement

Rates: 1 USD = 213,06 HUF (01.01.1999)
1 USD = 252,52 HUF (31.12.1999)

Source of Grant
1000 HUF
Hungarian Parliament
800
Ministries
150
Other governmental institution
0
Local authorities
0
Grants, other support
31 771
Membership Fees
3
Income from activities defined in the constitution and enterprising
77
Interest
93
Other
598
Total
33 492
1% contribution from income tax for civil organisations: 70.757 HUF

Expenditures

Expenditure
1000 HUF
1. Salaries, employers’ taxes
5 657
From which: regular salaries
2 484
      Salaries for people outside the staff
1 836
Social insurance
1 250
Employer’s tax
87
2. Material expenses:
8 852
From which: materials & supplies
310
      total service costs:
8 542
      from which: - gas, water electricity
          - rent
          - transport & travel costs
1 923
          - communication costs (telephone, mailing)
185
3. Other running expenses in total: (budget payment, taxes, fees, etc.)
515
4. Accumulation costs
0
Total expenditure:
15 024



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