The participants were welcomed by Polish-American Freedom Foundation Program Officer Kalina Grzeszuk-Zajączkowska who thanked them for their participation in the internal program evaluation that has been just finished. One of the objectives of that evaluation was to assess the effectiveness of local community animation method applied in the program, as well as factors critical for partnerships durability. Kalina Grzeszuk-Zajączkowska noted that the participants’ opinions and recommendations are very useful for the process of planning the new round of the program. Next, President of the Academy for Development of Philanthropy in Poland Paweł Łukasiak spoke about the importance in today’s world of partner activities and building the cooperation network that facilitates using joint resources and finding solutions to many difficult problems.

In the first part of the seminar the conclusions from the program evaluation were presented. Agnieszka Szczurek of Evaluation Center presented the results of the study carried out over last year which showed that the animation method applied in the program proved to be useful and effective at the time of pandemic, even if it required more involvement of the leader and the partners as well as flexibility and creativity in pursuing the common goals.

Next the participants listened to a debate on How To Find A Common Goal And Maintain The Partners’ Involvement moderated by expert of the Academy for Development of Philanthropy in Poland Tomasz Schimanek.  The debate participants were leaders of partnerships set up in the previous round of the program that managed to revive partnership cooperation thanks to support received by them from the Development Fund – Grażyna Kapaon (Norwid Republic Association), Alina Kierod (Children and Youth Assistance Association) and Magdalena Marynowska (Activation and Development Foundation). They presented various attitudes and ways of partnership re-activation and reviving, namely: responding to current challenges, meeting partners’ expectations and needs and offering certain benefits to partners, such as participation in training courses.

The next part, conducted by Paweł Łukasiak, was focused on enhancing local community activity. The President of the Academy for Development of Philanthropy in Poland mentioned that we are facing new challenges and therefore we need to find new ways of involving partners. In his opinion to reach the recipients we need to communicate using the language of benefits. The members of the discussion were representatives of individual partnerships participating in the event. Their key suggestions were that we should pay attention to significance of quality of relationships with the partners, implement smaller but more valuable initiatives, be more careful and emphatic, and act independently of political and other divisions.

Finally Culture for Climate initiative representative Iza Kaszyńska told the participants of the seminar about the need to grassroot acting for building cooperation of various environments – culture institutions, NGOs, local government – in order to set up pro-ecological partnerships and coalitions for climate that contribute to the process of introducing necessary amendments to the law in force.

The event was moderated by public lecturing coach Dorota Kostowska who specializes in webinars.

The Common Good Seminar is a cyclically held event for alumni of the “PAFF Local Partnerships” Program aimed at initiating and developing cooperation of participants in various programs of Polish-American Freedom Foundation. The general aim is to set up partnerships that will run projects important for local communities. They use the local community animation method that serves building the common good. Over seven rounds of the program that have been run since 2009, 50 PAFF Local Partnerships and 11 partnership start-ups were set up that cover the area of 107 municipalities and rural communes, and involve  900 partners. The Manager of the program is the Academy for Development of Philanthropy in Poland.