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Annual Report 2002

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Annual Report 2002

Youth Program

The Youth Program has the objective of providing equal opportunity in education for school children from small towns and rural areas. We support non-governmental organizations that initiate establishment of local scholarship programs for high school students, we assist proactive schools in organizing extracurricular activities for their charges. In an effort to reach the most needy, we liaise with local organizations that are concerned with similar problems, entrusting them with the task of advertising the projects in their localities, accepting applications, and with disbursing grants as well as the organization of meetings with grant recipients.

Equal Opportunities – Local Scholarship Programs

The project, carried on from 2000, aims at assisting the establishment of an alternative scholarships system for young people wishing to continue high-school education. In pursuing this initiative, we hope to assist talented youth from low-income families by putting in place new mechanisms for financing scholarships that base on local resources. The local scholarship funds established with our assistance raise money for study grants from local businesses, individual donors, and the local administration. Such funds operate on the basis of their own charters, drawn up by special scholarship committees; the scholarships awarded by them, varying between PLN 100 and 250 per month, are used to purchase textbooks and other learning aides, to pay for lodging, extra courses, commuting to school, etc. The decision to award a scholarship is usually based on the applicant’s school record and on the financial standing of her/his family, sometimes also on involvement in community service and in similar non-academic pursuits.

The project involves 38 organizations. The Foundation provides them with training in the area of establishment, management, and promotion of scholarship programs, raising and administration of funds, and building local coalitions. Upon meeting the condition of raising a declared amount from local resources, every organization receives a grant from the Stefan Batory Foundation towards increase of the scholarship fund. In 2002 the organizations participating in the project raised PLN 951 437 in local communities. This amount plus grants provided by the Stefan Batory Foundation, Levi Strauss & Co., Wrigley Poland and the Chemical Company Dwory S.A. totaling at PLN 747 450 supported 1 351 monthly scholarships in the school year 2002/2003. Given the number of scholarships, our program ranks third after the scholarship programs sponsored by the State Treasury Agricultural Property Agency (9 500 scholarships for children from former statefarm households in the academic year 2001/2002) and by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister (5 578 scholarships for the best secondary schools students).

After School

The project is designed to assist schools which support extracurricular activities for students and other members of the community. In 2002, the project was implemented in the Lubuskie and West Pomeranian Provinces. Our local partners, Youth for Youth Association, Koszalin and the Zielona Góra Civilitas Society, were responsible for liaising with schools, collecting applications and disbursing grants. Grants of up to PLN 2 000 were offered to elementary schools, gymnasiums, high schools, multilevel schools, school boards, parents’ councils, students self-government and NGOs active in the schools or working closely with them. The project was highly popular and it attracted 341 applications, 87 of which received grants worth a total of PLN 144 893.

A meeting for participants of the project’s second edition (2001, Pomerania Province) was organized by the local chapter of the Polish Humanitarian Organization in Toruń in May 2002.

Local History Competition

For several years, in conjunction with the Karta Center Foundation, we have promoted the Local History Competition, addressed to secondary school students. The aim of the program is to stimulate the interest in Poland’s recent history among young people and to encourage them to search for witnesses to historic developments and trace historical records in their neighborhoods. In the year 2001/2002, we announced a competition entitled Stranger Among Fellows – Experiencing the 20^th Century. Presentations based on the source materials assembled by the students could be submitted in any format – essay, collection of documents and photographs with commentary, video, or audio. A total of 473 submissions were received from 288 schools across all Poland; these were the fruits of work by 890 students who solicited the cooperation of several thousand of their elders, setting down their recollections and views. Awards and honorable mentions were accorded to the authors of 74 pieces; there were also 12 awards for the young authors’ tutors. The awards ceremony was held on June 10, 2002 at the Grand Hall of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The subject of a next, seventh edition of the Local History Competition in the academic year 2002/2003 is People on the Move – Migration, Social Promotion and Degradation 1914–1989.

New Gymnasium Textbooks

We made an attempt at reviewing several Polish textbooks dedicated to gymnasium students in the autumn of 2001, i.e. in the three years after introduction of a three-year gymnasium program. Eight independent reviewers were invited to participate: Barbara Fatyga, Agnieszka Fulińska, Dariusz Gawin, Tomasz Kizwalter, Beata Łaciak, Adam Pomorski, Krzysztof Rejmer and Andrzej Szpociński. The reviewers were asked to concentrate on what values and how are presented to young people and what citizen’s model is promoted in the new textbooks. A conference was held late January and early February to present the opinions of reviewers and teachers who actually use some of the textbooks. The reviewers tended to be critical about the textbooks. In contrast, the teachers defended the new textbooks and the new teaching methodology. The reviews and teachers’ opinions expressed at the conference were incorporated into a publication entitled The Review of Polish Textbooks for Gymnasiums. Discussion Input. On September 17, Gazeta Wyborcza published interviews conducted by Teresa Bogucka with Alina Kowalczykowa and with Dariusz Gawin who discussed the outcomes of our project. We also provided a grant to the Open Poland Association for their project to review gymnasium textbooks in the humanities section.

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