Community Development

Intercommunity Foundation
We know, presume, and hope that up-to-date information technology can establish up-to-date contacts. Up-to-date contacts are indispensable in our society, which has set off from the institutional provision of help towards mutual benefit.
Databases
Our Activities in 2000
Contact

Foundational Objective:
Assisting local communities, small regions, and non-profit organisations in collecting, processing, and providing information about community development to them.
It provides help in establishing local databases through providing information, training, and publications.
Furthermore, the objective of the foundation is to contribute to the establishment of equal opportunities in terms of getting information, and to assist the acquirement of knowledge needed for practising democracy.


The foundation performs the following activities in order to carry-out these objectives:
· It collects, systematises, and provides information connected to community work.
· It contributes to the development of the self-sustaining communities of citizens, and it promotes communication and co-operation among them.
· Through providing information and training it helps non-profit organisations become able to establish, maintain and provide databases.
· Through collecting and providing information it is active promoting equal opportunities for disadvantaged social groups.
· It researches, collects, and publishes the opportunities and solutions of local social action; it deals with the issues of local media; it formulates recommendations, and it organises courses on information management and computing for the editors and colleagues of local newspapers and local radio stations.
· It maps venues for collecting and providing information, and it co-operates with them as much as possible.


Intercommunity Foundation - Most Important Projects in the Past

The staff of the foundation has contributed to the preparation and publication of the first Hungarian newsletter on disk (Public Education “Diskletter”). The first issue of the newsletter was published in August 1987, and a C64 computer was needed in order to read it. Initially it was a quarterly, and when its PC version came out, the number of issues per year was increased to 10. It has been published nearly 50 times in more than 400 copies.
Source: the newsletter was self-sustaining, it did not require funding, and its termination was due to the establishment of the then much more up-to-date BBS system.

Between 1993 and Spring 1998 we run a BBS system, which has been replaced in the communication system of the database by its publication on the Internet.
Source: the establishment of the BBS system required only one single investment, which was financed through funding won at the current Public Education Grant Programme.

In 1994 we took part in a project organised and supervised by the Hungarian Association for Community Development. In the framework of the project we adopted an English local development method for mobilising communities: community appraising.
Source: PHARE funding granted to the Association for Community Development.

In 1994 we were given a grant by the PHARE Democracy Programme for expanding the database. In the framework of the grant, we established working contacts with nearly 30 NGOs which had collected, systematised, and provided significant amounts of information during their work. The electronic publication titled “This is the Minimum” (for details see later) can be regarded as a follow-up of this programme.

We collected and systematised Hungarian information on community development. First, it was published on a BBS system, and then we revised it so that it could be published on the Internet.
The web-site of the foundation is at www.kkapcsolat.hu.
Source: the PHARE Democracy Programme mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Upon request from the Ministry of Labour in 1996 we made recommendations and elaborated a plan for revealing and expanding the opportunities of co-operation between the ministry and the non-profit sphere.

At the end of 1997 we published the electronic book titled “This is the Minimum”, which targets secondary students and those who teach them.
The objective of the project was the compilation of a knowledge base which helps every actor of secondary education through providing information which otherwise, due to different reasons, would not be available, or which would be available only with difficulties and not in a compiled form.
This basis of information was published on floppy disks, making use of the opportunities provided by the hypertext as much as possible. Also, we paid attention to the fact that the form in which it was published should not hinder its application in the widest possible range.
Source: Public Foundation for Children and the Youth, Soros Foundation, Canadian Embassy.

The data-structure of the “Network for the Youth” information system, which has been established by the Public Foundation for Children and the Youth, was designed by the colleagues of our foundation in 1997.

The development of local media is considered by the foundation as one of its priorities. Hence, in co-operation with the Civil College Foundation we have elaborated a curriculum on local media, and we hold training courses for the volunteers of local newspapers on a regular basis.

In 1999 we published the electronic publication titled “This is the Minimum on Community Development” in co-operation with the Association for Community Development.

In 1999 we organised and, since then, have run a nation-wide e-mailing list called the “Civil News Network” in order to collect and circulate the news of the NGO sector.

We have elaborated a long-term information development plan for the small regions of Bugac-Majsai Homokhátság, Zala-kar, and Törökszentmiklós.


The Most Important Partners of the Foundation:

Hungarian Association for Community Development, Civil College Foundation, Foundation for Civil Radios, Welfare Service Foundation, Hungarian Union of the Friends of Nature, Mental-Hygienic Programme Bureau, “Island” Service for Helping the Youth, Life Career Foundation


The Sponsors of the Foundation:

Basic Public Education Programme (Ministry of Education and Culture), PHARE
Democracy Programme, Soros Foundation, Public Foundation for Children and the Youth, Association for Community Development, Civil College Foundation, Canadian Embassy, Hungarian Institute for Culture


Intercommunity Foundation – Basic Informations:

Founders:
Károly Kós Guild,
Hungarian Association for Community Development
i&i Ltd. for Cultural Information & Innovation,
Year of establishment: 1991.
Registered by the Budapest Court of Justice on 15. 08. 1991 under the serial number 1954.
Tax number: 19677268-201
Account number: OTP I. ker. fiók 11701004-20120090
Managing Director: József Huszerl, huszerl@kkapcsolat.hu
Staff: Johanna Radnai, johanna@kkapcsolat.hu, Balázs Vizi, vbali@kkapcsolat.hu

Address:
1011 Budapest, Corvin tér 8.
Tel./fax: 201-5728
www.kkapcsolat.hu


Community Development