A Belarusian NGO active in the countryside: the Centre of Development of Rural Entrepreneurship ‘Komarovo’ has signed an agreement with the Psycho-Neurological Centre called the Boarding House Dom-Internat at Svir. This model solution allows taking effective actions for disabled people and the mentally ill. The Development Policy Foundation endeavors to disseminate this model among the managers of other social care centers, institutions responsible for control and – last not least – the NGOs.
The application submitted by a non-governmental organisation is required for using the international funds intended for Belarusian beneficiaries. The NGOs are also more flexible: they can for example have recourse to the work of volunteers and manage their own funds. On the other hand, the activity intended for the disabled in Belarus almost totally belongs to the competence of national institutions, the role of NGOs in this field is relatively minor.
This is the reason for the fact that the cooperation between the social organisations and NGOs almost always has had an ad hoc feature, it consists of granting donations (national institutions can legally be the recipients of charitable assistance) or organising a single event like a common party, singing or drawing.
According to the Development Policy Foundation, this does not use up even to the small extent the potential of cooperation between NGOs and social organisations. It can be shown by an example – the one of Komarovo and Svir, which resulted in a widely developed programme, implemented in partnership with the Wąbrzeźno Association for Special Need Children in Poland. Within the framework of the project, co-funded by the grant of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the traineeship programme was realized. The therapeutic equipment also arrived to Svir, which will make it easier to carry out a therapy and will ensure that this project is long lasting.
Find out more about the project under www.dominternatsvir.org.
