Frontpage Dziennik Baltycki 19.11.1999

Translation by Damian Domski

Gdansk is the first Polish town where the so-called community workers will appear. Those people encourage the inhabitants to cooperate in solving their own problems.

Yesterday (18^th November - translator’s note) the representatives of the institutions engaged in Dutch project MATRA discussed about the new specialization in Gdansk School of Social Work (SPPSS) for community worker. The aim of the project is professional training of people who  would help local groups of inhabitants to work together and to take care of their own needs, for instance a playground or sports field for children. The first community workers will graduate two years from now.

"It will be the first such a profession in Poland. The social activist will become a professional. Sometimes formal or informal organisations arise out of his initiatives," says Krystyna Dominiczak, director of the Department of Social Welfare Organisation of the Provincial Administration in Gdańsk. "This project has arisen huge interest amongst  “starosta”s (heads of  county administration - translator’s note]  The pilot projects of MATRA will be conducted in Wrzeszcz and Lower Orunia.

"Poland has a quite antiquated system of social work," considers Willem Blok, the project manager.

"The group system of help has a future here. Individual supporting of those in need is like carrying water to the sea."