Polder
Welfare
Abstracts
Worksite of Willem Blok (Netherlands), about social work, social policy and citizen participation
The term polderwelfare is invented and described by Willem Blok of NHL University of professional education in Leeuwarden. Polderwelfare is a variation on the economical term "poldermodel". Polderwelfare is related to the current state of development in social security, care & welfare in The Netherlands. See the definition
Abstract for the IUCISD-Conference: “Face of research in
European Social Development: aims, results, impacts”,
in Graz, Austria, 23-25 September 2004.
Willem Blok
The Social Innovation Centre in Poland:
building an instrument for modernization
of social work & local social policy
Problem
As many other transforming countries, Poland is confronted with numerous needs, demands and problems and a growing necessity to cope with them and to find solutions. Major problems are unemployment, housing shortage, poverty, neglected rural areas and villages, urban districts in decline, homelessness, alcoholism, drugs addition, child care, crime, passiveness and the exclusion and marginalization of social groups, including many of the elderly.
To cope with these problems, a well thought out and democratic based social policy is of vital interest. Modern professional social work plays a vital role in that.
Because local social policy is a new phenomenon in Poland, local authorities have little knowledge of the social field and social workers have to learn how to cope with it.
Project
Since June 2003 the Polish SIC! Foundation (Fundacja SIC!) is building up a Social Innovation Centre in and for Poland, supported by NHL University of Professional Education in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands and financed by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs.
Fundacja SIC! is counterpart in the so called Matra SIC! Project. This Project is a well thought out respons on current and expected developments in Poland. Matra SIC! contributes to the development of modern local social infrastructures in Poland by stimulating, initiating, feeding and supporting the modernization and further development of local social policy, social work and citizen participation.
This is done by establishing, building up and coaching a Social Innovation Centre in Poznan, operating nation wide and self-supporting at the end of the project, so in three years time.
Matra SIC!'s target groups are social workers, social work managers and social policy makers on the local and regional level in Poland.
The project is build on a solid, self constructed legal Polish basis, namely Fundacja SIC! - Centrum Innowacji Społecznej, supported by 11 Polish organizations which are represented in either the Management board or the Advisory board.
See for more and detailed information on Internet: http://sic.to
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