The Local Activity Support Center-CAL Association, in Warsaw Poland, is a national network of 150 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and institutions. Since 2000, the Mott Foundation has provided $300,000 to CAL to support its efforts to teach network members innovative ways to strengthen communities by involving citizens and tapping local resources. Pawel Jordan, CAL’s co-founder, discusses the organization’s work with Mott Communication Officer Maggie I. Jaruzel.
Mott: CAL is a leader in the field of social animation in Central/Eastern Europe. How would you describe “social animation”?
PJ: When we talk of social animation, we are talking from the French tradition, not the Anglo tradition. It is not about the movies or about characters in the cinema.
A social animator is a community worker, but not a community organizer like in the U.S. It is the person who animates the community to act. Our meaning of animator is an organizer, a facilitator, a moderator and a catalyst. This is the person who is mobilizing people to help themselves and to help the community. This is somebody who is working through the social processes with people and helping them to make a change.
It is important to distinguish the difference between the role of animator and leader. The animator is the facilitator and the mobilizer, who is helping different groups and different partners, while the leader is mostly connected to one group. The key role of the animator is to look for leaders so they can work together. The animator can mobilize different groups and then leave while the leader stays with his own group.
Mott: Describe the work that CAL does with Social Welfare Centres in Poland.
PJ: The people at the Social Welfare Centres in Poland have said our project has helped them because they changed their scope of work from serving as an official or state institution to really serving as a community institution.
Social Welfare Centres in Poland have been associated with giving away money — giving public benefits to poor people. It is supposed to be social work, but it is not social work at all. It is handing out money, not really making a change in anyone’s life.
When we educate their staff, we talk about having a true social workers’ center so the center changes from a state institution to a community institution that is open to meeting the needs of people in the community. It involves talking with different partners and using different methods, such as using volunteers in your work, creating self-help groups, and being open for neighbors to come in.
Most importantly, this is not the patronizing relationship, like patron and client, but a partner-to-partner relationship. That is very crucial. For staff in the Social Welfare Centres, it is really a challenge to understand this change because in this new way they are really taking care of people. They need to empower people. They need to mobilize them, not just give out money.
Mott: What are CAL’s future goals?
PJ: At this time, we are working two paths. One path is using our Local Activity Centre model with institutional centers — Social Welfare Centres and Cultural Centres. The other path is our work with individuals called social animation.
We are hoping to also have a third path that works with associations of residents or neighborhood associations. We can see it as a complementary system to what we already have. We have our program for individuals as local animators, a program for community institutions like Social Welfare Centres that are becoming agents of change, and then we would have a representative of the community, like a neighborhood association, to also make changes. We are working on this now.
Mott: How are the principles of democracy woven throughout your work?
PJ: As a society, we are quite well advanced in creating businesses and enterprises in Poland. But we are straying from the ideal in our thinking about civic activities. We are not very trusting of other people and lacking in our need to show kindness toward them. We are not putting enough emphasis on the development of our overall civil society.
When you look at one side, you see that our society seems to be very entrepreneurial. But on the other side, it is not very well advanced in this civil movement. I am not speaking about freedom of the government parties, the free market and the free media. We have that form of democracy.
I am talking about the soul of democracy, which is the activity of the people. If we only have entrepreneurial people, then very soon we will be a consumption society, looking out only for ourselves. We will be leaving behind our human values of solidarity, our values of being good to other people, our values of working for the public benefit and working with other people in our communities. I really hope this will not happen in Poland.
At CAL, we are trying to use a community approach and build community spirit. That’s the most important part for us. We say we are working on the model and the movement. Yes, we are working on the local activity model and the role of social animators, but we are also working on a national movement of change so we have values of personal empowerment, solidarity, and respect and kindness for each other in Poland.