Category Archives: CFs in CEE

Call for participation – Community Foundation Study Visit to Latvia

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Join a group of 12 European community foundation practitioners to collectively explore the experience and practice of community philanthropy of our Latvian colleagues. 

The CF study visit is a one-week long, intensive learning program that brings a group of community foundation (CF) and CF support organization (CFSO) practitioners and thinkers from different European countries to one country to meet and interact with several community foundations for the purpose of mutual learning and reflection. The host country of the 2018 edition of the ECFI Community Foundation Study Visit will be Latvia and its partner in organizing the study visit is the Community Foundation Movement of Latvia.

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Growing Ambition in a Shrinking Space: Hungary’s Community Foundations after the Election

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Hungarian CF Support Program: Ready for bad weather

Tamás Scsaurszki

It may come as a surprise, but the ambitions of Hungarian community foundations are growing while the space for civic action is shrinking in Hungary; often times Hungary feels like ’the Syria’ of Europe, a kind of battleground for ideologies and political superpowers; there is a heavy price we pay for it, but still, it is not impossible to work on improving communities!

Read the whole article here.

 

 

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Have you ever heard of Vinnytsia?

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Beata Hirt, Executive Director, Healthy City Community Foundation, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia

„No, never“,  I would have answered three months ago.

Everything has started with a phone call from Boris Strečanský[1].  He asked if we would consider being a partner with the Ukrainian Podilska Hromada Community Foundation in the CF2CF Exchange program supported by the European Community Foundation Initiative (ECFI). We agreed, but to tell the truth, we were not that excited.  And this would soon change!

Meeting in the office of the Podilska Hromada Community Foundation

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First National Conference of Community Foundations in Hungary

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by Boris Strečanský

The National CF Support Program Közös Alapon organizes the First National Conference of CFs in Hungary on March 18-19, 2016 in Budapest. The conference will provide space for presentations of community foundation practitioners from Hungary and Slovakia as well as for discussing perspectives on the social environment, situation and opportunities of civil initiatives in Hungary today provided by leading social development and research professionals. More information on the Conference can be retrieved here.

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4th Annual Conference of CFs, Sibiu – Romania, November 5th-7th 2015

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Dear all,

I hope my message finds you well.

As already discussed with some of you, we are happy to invite you to join us at the 4th Annual Conference of the Romanian CFs held this year in the beautiful city of Sibiu, November 5th-7th 2015.

Please find bellow and attached the final details regarding the conference program as well as all the registration information. We will have English simultaneous interpretation.

Here is the link to sign-up for the Conference and there is the October 10th deadline until when we are looking forward to hearing from you.

The costs are 100 euro per participant, 150 euros if there are 2 participants from 1 organisation. This covers the cost of conference speakers, materials and meals. Transportation&accommodation costs and arrangements are up to each participant. The conference venue is at Ibis Hotel and we will also provide a few options for hotels nearby if there is interest.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

All the best,
Simona

2015_ROCF_conference

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Some answers and more questions

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 Since the last study trip and then reading a provocative but truthful reflection paper from Jiri Barta I have in my mind two disturbing questions – is more philanthropy our best (and only) way to sustainability of our communities and second – do we have a courage to do it ?

Let me now walk you through some examples of our attempts to raise money from local sources and what we have learnt in our foundation.

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The Cluj Donor Circle. Social change through collective giving.

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The Cluj Community Foundation supports the development of the Cluj Donor Circle since 2013. We wished to have the Donor Circle concept in Cluj because it brings together donor communities in a setting where they feel the joy of giving and where what matters is not how much we give but how we give, the underlying strategy for the change we wish to spur around us.

Donor circle

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News about CFs in Hungary

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But, will anybody be interested….???

This is the question put by my colleague Ivan at our staff retreat in July 2014 – reflecting the uncertainty that he, and all of us, felt about our chances of finding local people motivated to start community foundations in Hungary …

Tamas Scsaurszki wrote a story of last two years of efforts of his team in nurturing the CF concept. As the story is longer than a typical blog post, by clicking on the picture you get to the full article.

kozop team

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More philanthropy

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In my reflection paper related to a wonderful visit to Slovakia I wrote about hope and about more philanthropy.  See the quote:

“The hope for sustainability, the hope for larger impact and the hope for a better future is called: more philanthropy.

I can hear some critics saying – not enough of it is happening and it is not happening fast enough. To those reasonable voices I would respond – let’s begin exploring what we need to do to change our own behavior, approach and practice so that we build and nurture more philanthropy in our community.”

I wonder, is there more hope and more philanthropy in the CEE region now? If yes, what has changed since summer 2014? If not, how can we change what we do so that we contribute to more philanthropy?

Any ideas? I am really curious.

Jiri Barta

 

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20 Years of CFs in the CEE: Short Movie

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Can 20 years of experience with nurturing civic engagement through the vehicles of community foundation be condensed into four minutes?

First of the movies made during the recent CF Study Trip to Slovakia attempts to do that, thanks to the C.S. Mott Foundation and Mihai Leaha / Tribafilm.

http://youtu.be/_fJ7NsN3FBU

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