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Annual Report 2005
Foundation in 2005Our main priority in the year 2005, similarly as in the previous years, was support to initiatives aimed at strengthening the role and enhancing the opportunities for the operation of civic organizations in which we see an important element of strong and vibrant civil society and an indispensable condition for the proper workings of democracy. This was the aim of capacity building and institutional development grants we offered to non-governmental organizations in Poland (Civic Society Program) and in the countries of our neighbors: Ukraine and Belarus (Citizens in Action Program). This was also the principal concern of the Third Sector Program, we have been carrying for the last three years from funds of the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe, which supports activities aimed at creating favorable conditions of civil society development, strengthening cooperation of non-governmental organizations with public and private sector and building financial basis of their stability. Thanks to the generosity of our donors from Poland and abroad, including 1707 taxpayers who gave us 1% of their income tax for 2004 of a total value PLN 328 187,33, we were able to continue our assistance to local non-governmental organizations that run scholarship programs for underprivileged youth from low-income families and rural areas. Seeing in the growing alienation and distrust of citizens towards political elites and public institutions a serious threat to the democratic procedures and rule of law in our country, we continued our efforts to engage citizens in public life, promote initiatives designed to ensure transparency of decision making processes and increase political accountability of public authorities. This was the role of three monitoring projects we carried out last year: monitoring of electoral promises made during the local government election, monitoring of the promises to fight corruption made by political parties in parliamentary election campaign and monitoring of presidential campaign finances (undertaken in Poland for the first time in 2005 presidential race). Also, in an effort to promote proper governance, transparency and accountability standards among the public administration at the local level we were carrying out Transparent Poland public campaign with Gazeta Wyborcza daily, Foundation in Support of Local Democracy and Polish-American Freedom Foundation. In order to strengthen organizations that took up the task of monitoring transparency, ethical conduct and accountability of public institutions we continued a program of grant assistance for watchdog organizations launched in 2004. In the framework of public debates on important issues connected with the transformations in Poland and Europe, we have been organizing for a couple of years already, we hosted a series of lectures by leaders of political parties and candidates for presidential office with a common title On the Repair of the Polish Republic, broadly covered and commented in the media, as well as a series of debates on the directions of Polish foreign policy. Our actions to enhance citizens’ access to law and judiciary focused on support to organizations providing free legal counsel, especially those associated in the Union of Citizens Advice Bureaus and the network of University Legal Clinics. We organized last meetings of journalists and judges in the four-year long Journalist in Court project designed to make the court more friendly towards citizens and media, and supported initiatives aimed to promote the legal and human rights education among the secondary school students. In the international area the Foundation engaged in the activities aimed at strengthening civil society, democratic reforms and pro-European tendencies in Eastern Europe and enhancing cooperation and experience sharing between organizations from European Union and countries outside EU. We continued to promote the idea of European integration in Ukraine (The Enlarged EU and Ukraine: New Relations project) and – despite diametrically different internal conditions – in Belarus (European Choice for Belarus project). In cooperation with partners from European Union and Eastern European countries we monitored visa policy and the consular practice of seven EU countries towards citizens of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Moldova. In the framework of promoting cross-border cooperation we made grants to organizations that carried out cooperation projects with partners from Eastern Europe (East-East Program) and organizations that developed trilateral partner projects (with Germany and Russia) in Kaliningrad District. 2005 was the last year of the grant support program to joint initiatives from Polish and German twin cities we were running with Bosch Foundation for the past four years. The Program helped to implement 109 projects that involved communities on both sides of the border. In 2005, in the framework of our grant making programs we made 513 grants for institutions and organizations, 47 individual and group travel grants for 169 people participating in projects abroad and 5 awards for a total of PLN 12,9 million. Additionally, we spent PLN 3,7 million on our operational programs: for projects implemented by us alone or in cooperation with partners. The summary of our activities together with the full list of grants made in 2005 is included in the further sections of this publication. Moreover, in 2005, the following long-term projects were carried out by other organizations from grants we had made in the previous years:
Copyright © Fundacja Batorego
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