Alumni of the “PAFF Local Partnerships” Program who implemented their projects in the period from 2009 to 2019, met at the virtual Common Good Seminar. It gave them an opportunity to share experiences and gain knowledge and skills useful especially in the epidemic reality.
On February 12, 2021 the representatives of partnerships established in earlier rounds of the “PAFF Local Partnerships” Program met at the Common Good Seminar.
The event was opened by Joanna Lempart, the PAFF Program Director. In her address she emphasized that partnerships keep being active and effective despite the epidemic conditions as projects implemented by them under the Development Fund show. Next Paweł Łukasiak, the President of the Academy for the Development of Philanthropy in Poland thanked the participants of the meeting for their involvement in activities benefitting their local communities and encouraged them to take active part in training sessions.
The first part of the Seminar, where everybody could take the floor, was designed to share experiences. The representatives of partnerships spoke about their biggest successes and the most difficult challenges in the recent time, as well as they commented on the issue of redefining the common good concept. They indicated that despite unfavorable circumstances they managed to achieve many targets important for their communities in 2020, although they often had to change the form of carrying out certain activities. The epidemic threat situation has also caused the necessity to define anew the term ‘common good’, which last year had different meaning than for example two years ago. Last year the priority were health care issues and helping those seniors who were closed in senior homes, as well as children and young people who had to study in distance learning form. In some partnerships the threat situation was also an impulse to invite new entities to cooperation and increase their membership.
The second part of the Seminar was of a training nature. Piotr Henzler of the Academy of Civic Organizations Foundation conducted a training session on effective work with a dispersed team. He described types of dispersed teams and told about disfunctions that have negative impact on effectiveness of running a project. He also pointed to the strategic areas which shall be looked after in distance work, and dealt with the myths about the remote working.
In turn, Katarzyna Czayka-Chełmińska, the Vice President of School of Leaders Foundation gave a lecture about going through the changes in such a way so as not to lose the sight of people. She noted that first of all one has to help himself/herself to be able to help the others. Then she presented in details four stages of going through the crisis situation – negation, resistance, experimenting, and getting involved. She also pointed to the fact that social bonds are as important as vaccine is, and they can help us survive our hard time.
The last training session was on partnership project online management. Marcin Gołąbek an expert in the Internet marketing presented the tools that are useful when opportunities to meet in traditional form and share duties in partnerships are very restricted. Next, based on the example of organizing an event summing up a project, he presented the Asana program functionalities that allow to delegate tasks and monitor their implementation in an easy way.
The Seminar leader was Dorota Kostowska, a public speaking trainer who specializes in webinars.
The Common Good Seminar is an event held regularly for the “PAFF Local Partnerships” Program alumni. Its objective is to support development of local partnerships with a potential to continue, reestablish or sustain activities started in earlier rounds of the program.
The objective of the “PAFF Local Partnerships” Program is to initiate and develop cooperation among participants of various PAFF programs to set up partnerships that can implement social projects important to local communities. The program uses the method of animating local communities to build the common good. Over sever rounds of the program implemented from 2009, as many as 50 PAFF Local Partnerships and 11 start-ups were established that cover 107 communes and municipalities and run their activities together with 900 partners. The program manager is the Academy for the Development of Philanthropy in Poland.
