What problem are you solving?:

One of the core problems of the nonprofit sector in Hungary is the lack of funding. Organizations are dependent on sponsors and grant juries. Hungarian society considers the 1% of personal income tax sufficient support for NGOs. Intersectoral cooperation is not encouraged, thus few organizations get support from business organizations. When there is corporate sponsorship, it is often only possible through personal contacts, influencing the donor company’s CSR policy. At the same time business organizations feel the pressure to operate in a more responsible way, yet they are not convinced that this investment becomes profitable for them – by bringing recognition and acknowledgment. They often complain of a lack of feedback from supported NGOs. There is a need for a platform which – by using widely available and easy to learn, interactive web 2.0 devices – will become a place for intersectoral communication, networking, and an exchange of experience.

Describe your idea:

We set up a website displaying – both with text and graphics – how much each company spends on CSR, and by clicking on the icon it shows what the money was spent on. We use the data of the Tax Authorities to obtain the information on ho much money they spent on CSR (this sum means tax relief in Hungary) but the editors will ask for the identities of the recipients as it is not public data.
Companies and NGOs who do not provide information appear as „black holes” on the website, thus the public can put pressure on them to account for their CSR-related activities.
Each company’s data sheet has a forum for comments where NGOs and individual citizens can say how useful they find the company’s CSR policy/practice.
Database and matching system are set up to offer companies and NGOs potential partners.
We publish accounts of successful cooperations, displaying good practices.

What country will this operate in?: Hungary

Who are you?:

We are a group of independent experts: the group consists of an IT professional who is also a software developer, a journalist who has experience both in printed and online press, an economist and a psychologist who are the members of a Hungarian Freedom of information think tank organization.
The project leader is a journalist who reported on CSR for two different news websites and also edited the section on business ethics and sustainability, and covered this topic for a variety of publications.

What problem are you solving?:

From time to time people learn about the new law only after our parliament voted for it. Often laws are harmful to the interests of a specific group of citizens, or even for all. In order to be able to watch in advance, we could create a site to let users follow and rate draft bills.

Describe your idea:

To increase transparency of parliament, this project lets users to keep an eye on draft bills by keywords or by draft author with RSS and email alerts.

Collective rating for bill drafts and bill’s authors could be represented in form of “top-Nth most dangerous legislations”. It will bring awareness for citizens and will make future collective actions possible.

Simultaneously information about the rating should be told to the authors of the bills by e-mail and (or) fax communication.

What country will this operate in?: Ukraine

Who are you?:

media activist and programmer, work for http://zaua.org

What problem are you solving?:

Liepaja is the third biggest town in Latvia with the second highest unemployment. In this economic situation people search different possibilities. One of it – to establish their own business. But the problem is that they haven’t practical skills to start small business.
Liepaja University has all intellectual capacity to offer different courses to citizens of Liepaja. LiepU also wants to be more open to local community offering different activities.
Idea will solve the problems:
1) Advance practical skills of local community to start their own small business;
2) Provide LiepU as open higher education institution;
3) Advance initiative of citizens to start small business, what is very important to develop healthy economics.

Describe your idea:

LiepU are planning open lections in entrepreneurship. Idea is – that theese lections are free in different subjects (Organizational Management, Finances, Quality Management, Communication sciences etc.). Passing the exams – students will get certificate with credit points (ECTS) and also consultations to establish company.
Second part of idea is going to open portal where everyone could watch open lections, get materials, and get presentations for free. But if he/she would like to get certificate after this self-learning, he/she should pass exam as other students.

What country will this operate in?: Latvia

Who are you?:

Today the LiepU is a state financed higher education, science and culture institution with a student body of 3000 and 300 staff members, split over the 3 faculties (Faculty of Educational Science, Humanities Faculty and Faculty of Natural Sciences and Social Sciences. The faculties include 12 sub-departments, 9 science sub-fields that are managed by professors/ associated professors. The University has the following study profiles: Humanitarian sciences and Art, Social welfare, Teacher education and Education sciences, Social sciences and Entrepreneurship, Natural sciences, Mathematics and Infomation technologies, Services. The University is an active member of national and international collaboration networks between institutions of higher education and is a member of several international educational mobility programmes.

What problem are you solving?:

• Lack of communication between citizens and local government
• Low transparency in the work of local government

Describe your idea:

Interactive web site that would serve as an intermediary in communication between citizens and their local authorities. Citizens would pose their questions for the local government officials on the site. These questions will be automatically forwarded to e-mail addresses of these officials. Replies from the officials would be automatically displayed on the site. Questions and answers would be public for everyone to see. White and black ranking lists would be formed.
For example, the white list would consist of:
• The names of the officials with the biggest number of questions answered, etc.
The black list would be consisted of:
• The names of officials, who responded to the smallest number of questions.
The society would gain:
• A unique tool (site) where the public can ask questions to the local officials,
• Local officials will be motivated for a greater communication with the citizens because of pressure of public opinion and transparency of the ranking lists, etc.

What country will this operate in?: Serbia

Who are you?:

Ivan Stankovic
Date of birth 03-28-1980
Work experience
06-25-2007–to present, Accordia Group LLC New York, branch office in Niš
System Engineer, Project leader,
Manage the development of a five-member team; Oversee the administration and maintenance of the company’s ICT infrastructure; Plan and schedule project deliverables, goals, milestones;
Education and training
2008 – to present, PhD student
Information Technologies, Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Serbia
1998 – 2006
MSc in Electronic Engineering, field of telecommunication
Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Serbia

What problem are you solving?:

The role of the citizen as an elector does not end up with putting a vote with a candidate’s name into the ballot-box. The citizen has the right to know how the person elected by him performs. Unfortunately, soon after the election, many members of the local government break any contacts with their electors. There are no mechanisms to inform citizens about town councillors and their activity. We want to build a clear system of publicly accessible information about people who fulfill elective public functions or people who run for these functions. Our service will deliver every citizen the access to independent, unbiased information about town councillors. Everybody will be able to compare and assess whether the councillors’ declarations find reflection in real activities.

Describe your idea:

The database declared by candidates for town councilors in local elections in 2010 and info about councilor activity.Video live transmissions of town council meetings for further replay. Every councilor can add new data (updated by admin).All changes with dates.No possiblity to remove promises.Everybody can be sent newsletters.Regular chats with councilors and the mayor,recorded for further replay.Portal will enable to process,present,search and compare collected info.An advanced search-engine will simplify the process of searching for info.It will be transparent and readable for average user with ranking of concillors based on fulfilled promises in a given tenure.Editors will also take part in council sessions and committees to find out how the councilors vote and whether they are active or not.All the data will appear in the publicly accessible database.Website is universal,for use in every town.

What country will this operate in?: Poland

Who are you?:

Stowarzyszenie Malborskie Centrum KWADRAT (MC2) – (Association Malbork Centre SQUARE (MC2) is non-governmental organisation working for development of democracy and citizen society – the society of people who are aware of their obligations and rights, who are engaged in the matters of their local community and the country.
The priority tasks of the Association are: strengthening non-governmental organisations and their role in the social life, increasing citizens’ activity, promoting the rules for the country of law and transparency in public life and developing co-operation, solidarity and social partnership.

What problem are you solving?:

Corruption is perceived to be one of the key problems facing transitional Western Balkans societies and their political, judicial and executive institutions. Addressing the lack of transparency through disclosure of public information is a key precondition for developing open societies, while freedom of information (FOI) legislation provides a powerful tool for prevention and exposure of corruption. Countries in Western Balkans adopted their FOI legislation with a range of shortcomings which have created challenges and obstacles during implementation. Citizens rarely request information from institutions due to fear of the system, low awareness of their rights and lack of understanding of how to use the legal mechanisms available. Only a small number of NGOs and investigative journalists are actively using FOI as tool for fighting corruption and monitoring operations of the government.

Describe your idea:

Through the strategic partnership with Transparency International chapters from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, MANS would coordinate submission of requests for access to public information in three countries and place the replies to the regional portal, which would also provide legal aid and support to media, academics and NGO’s. Portal would also offer advises on how to access information in all of three countries. Furthermore, if any person would be interested in any public information from three countries in question, this portal would offer possibility to pose a request, through our partners, to compare similar information from regional countries or to research on already posed questions and obtained answers

What country will this operate in?: Montenegro

Who are you?:

MANS is the partner of Transparency International for Montenegro and a non-governmental organisation that supports the development of Montenegro and poverty reduction by promoting good governance and strengthening citizens participation in the decision-making process.
MANS is dedicated to raising public awareness of social, economic and civic rights; supporting citizens and their associations to participate actively in the development, implementation and monitoring of social policies; and promoting cooperation and the exchange of information between all social groups.

Strategic Goals and Objectives for 2009-2011:
1. Significantly reduce corruption
2. Increase the level of active participation of citizens in formulating development policies and combating corruption
3. Make governance more transparent, accountable and responsive in the ways which eliminate corruption and increase the level of active citizenship

What problem are you solving?:

The arrogance of Czech politicians has been growing to an intolerable scale. Corruption and non-transparency is a daily practice at all levels of governance, the media report about it, but that is the end of all causes. Citizens are feeling helpless, resigned, apathetic.

Describe your idea:

The ChangePolitics.cz website offers immediate, direct and broad civil society feedback to specific politicians for their specific action(s), as well as the opportunity to give or to withdraw long-term support to any MP or cabinet member.
When the base of “voting” user grows large enough, this will create highly visible and highly competitive platform (politicians can write their opinions as well – just as any other citizen) that will generate significant pressure on transparent and accountable action.
Mass-scale instant feedback is possible only on the internet – and thanks to direct linkage of the website with Facebook.

What country will this operate in?: Czech Republic

Who are you?:

Civil association Změn politiku (Change Politics) is a small registered charity (ever since August 2009) founded by three individuals, two of the founders having a long-standing record as PR, media and fundraising consultants for NGOs. All work that we have done so far (our website is operational, but still requires lots of more work, tuning and improvements) was paid for by us as individuals. We ran out of resources and could use some serious help in discussing the finetuning option of our web.

What problem are you solving?:

Violence of carers in care institutions is a common but rather unknown problem in Poland. We know about it from many media reports and our constant contact with care institutions (nursing homes, old peoples’ homes, insane homes, orphanages etc.). It also results from human nature and mechanisms of arising of violence.
Polish society is not aware of this problem. Despite the law, care institutions are mostly closed and isolated so not many people can come inside and observe what is going on there. Shocking media reports (beating old men, humbling mentally handicapped, insulting children etc.) seem to be just incidents for most of people.
Authorities, obliged to supervise care institutions, are not reliable enough to ensure prevention and fighting with acts of violence because they rarely know about them and want to reveal them.
There is no Polish website which would enable a social supervision of care institutions.

Describe your idea:

WWW.OPIEKABEZAGRESJI.PL (carewithoutviolence) will be a website where it will be able to:
-report acts of violence in care institutions on-line
-monitor the reaction for the notification (we would pass the case to authorities and follow the reaction)
-add/check an opinion of a specific care institution
-check how a specific institution is prepared to prevent aggression
-find information about the idea of care without violence
The website would be intended for: people who work in care institutions, residents of the institutions and their families, people who where witnesses of any abnormalities, authorities, journalists etc.
Our aim is to rise awareness of the problem of violence in public care institutions, enable society reporting such cases and monitor authorities’ reaction. The website would also put pressure on care institutions in order to make them comply with human rights.
Constructing the website, we are planning to use all the benefits of an Internet platform.

What country will this operate in?: Poland

Who are you?:

ORATOR Foundation is an NGO set up in 1991. We deal with many social problems. Currently, one of our main domains is the idea of care without violence in total care institutions. We have a many-years experience in the field of functioning of nursing homes, orphanages, senior homes etc. and we deeply know their strong and weak points. 2 years ago we set up a Partnership “Care Without Aggression” which spreads the idea of care without violence by organising conferences, trainings and other social actions.
I am a member of the board of Foundation and its Office Manager as well. I am also responsible for an international cooperation.

What problem are you solving?:

Simplifying and activation of local community communications exchange.
In spite of active use of Internet and mobile services, Ukrainian still have lack of experience to use new media to cooperate and coordinate actions on local level. There are several barriers for eInclusion in Ukraine:
1) lack of projects for community use of technologies; 2) weak motivation to use new media for mobilization, declaration of personal opinion; 3) low level of development and access to e-resources in regional authorities; 4) low feedback between public servants and community.

Describe your idea:

Юрба [jurba] in Ukrainian means “crowd” or “swarm”. Our project should be based on strength of neighbourhood cooperation for local community crowdsoursing for community engagement and public policy making.
Based on experience of FixMyStreet, SeeClickFix, Near.ly, Peuplade, Yourstreet, NeighborForNeighbor and many others we plan to develop open source platform integrated with FrontlineSMS. The basic modules are communal services, transport, ecology, health, work&business, criminal, prices etc. Each citizen could inform about the problem and also send ideas how to solve the problem. Ideally it should integrated with twitter and facebook accounts of the community.

What country will this operate in?: Ukraine

Who are you?:

We are the group of political and communications studies in Rivne Institute of Slavonic studies. We have strong relations with municipal and regional authorities as well as NGOs, business, Universities. We are interested in innovative international projects in the field of eInclusion in Ukraine

What problem are you solving?:

Citizens of Ukraine have no adequate acsess to pallitive / hospice care. There are about 1.5 million of people who need it each year.

Describe your idea:

We would like to lauch modern Internet page which will enable us to inform people about their rights to dignified life till the end of their life.
This site should be transparent, have accountable information, have tools for two-way communications, good analysis of information etc

What country will this operate in?: Ukraine

Who are you?:

We are operating since 2007. We are national association, this means we have branches in all 25 regions of Ukraine. We have about 50 individual and collective members.