ORIGINS OF THE “SOCIAL EMERGENCY” ASSOCIATION

The Social Emergency Association has its roots in the tradition of the “Barka” Foundation for Mutual Help, whose founders wished to create environments and social structures, giving the ‘forgotten and unwanted’ members of the Polish society a chance of personal and social development.  That mission resulted in the creation of an alternative system of assistance for people from socially marginalized groups. The system enables them to reconstruct their identity, gives them a chance of the wide-ranging education possibilities and finding their place in the new social and economic conditions through membership in various communities. The Social Emergency was established in 2000 as one of the programmes of the “Barka” Foundation. In 2004, people involved in the activity of the Social Emergency founded the Social Emergency Association that continues a process of helping people in need by creating communities, hostels, readaptation homes for the homeless, self-help groups, therapeutic programmes, and through environmental work as well as social and vocational reintegration of the socially excluded groups.

MISSION OF THE ASSOCIATION

The mission of the Association is to create communities for socially excluded people, whose aim is to create possibilities for personal and social development of such people as well as:

• to create a local network of support for people at risk of social exclusion as well as to motivate the marginalized people and environments (initiating local self-help groups, and associations too),
• to develop a housing base for the socially excluded (community houses, readaptation homes, social dwellings),
• to provide the socially excluded with various forms of temporary, educational and self-help assistance,
• to support initiatives aimed at creating various forms of education, employment and enterprise (close cooperation with organizations that carry out such activity),
• to cooperate with state and local governments as well as with organizations dealing with public assistance, mainly the self-help domestic and foreign organizations,
• to participate in evaluating the scale of social problems,
• to cooperate in support of the realization of the programmes initiated by the “Barka” Foundation.

THE ASSOCIATION PURSUES ITS AIMS THROUGH:

• founding and running community houses, hostels, readaptation homes along with the socially excluded,
• founding and running intervention and counselling centres,
• organizing self-help, material, educational and spiritual support,
• providing help with seeking employment,
• cooperation with institutions providing education, enterprise possibilities and social buildings for the socially excluded,
• integration of local communities to enhance the effectiveness of help for the people in difficult life situations, 
• taking action aimed at achieving the statutory purposes of the Association,
• participation in associations of the organizations dealing with social exclusion issues.