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Description
In Gdynia and Gdansk, several community shops are operating that are engaged in charitable activities and support the residents’ social integration. However, their potential is not fully exploited. Our project aims to make community shops the basis for the development of a ‘welfare society’ to replace the ‘welfare state’, which faces many systemic obstacles. Therefore, is this project we want to increase the potential of community shops as places that counteract exclusion, promote local cooperation act as centres of social integration. We want to create a network of self-help and self-advocacy activists as well as advisory teams that will support the community shops’ development. In the first stage of the project we will investigate the social changes that have occurred due to the activities of existing community shops, and analyze their customers’ needs. In the second stage, we will create working groups and conduct trainings in self-advocacy and social cooperation. We will also identify social leaders who will act as community advocates. In the next stage, we will implement and test the proposed solutions, and then develop educational materials with guidelines on how to prevent exclusion and carry out self-help and self-advocacy activities. The project is addressed to people at risk of social exclusion, including people in various crises, experiencing exclusion, including digital exclusion, migrants,as well as employees of administration and CSR departments of companies.
Summary of project results
The aim of the project was to increase the potential of community stores as places to counteract exclusion, promote cooperation of local communities, as well as social integration centers, by creating around them a lasting and active network of people involved in advocacy and self-help activities. After 5 years of operation of community stores, it is time to check whether the idea behind the Food Bank in Tricity - to create a place where, in addition to distributing free food, we also create a customer-friendly place that creates an atmosphere allowing for social inclusion. Moreover, we wanted to create a place enabling the development of leadership skills among our clients, promoting an active social attitude and increasing self-help potential.
The start of the project coincided with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, which meant that our activities focused mainly on social inclusion and care for war refugees. At the same time, we conducted surveys of our clients and conducted interviews to learn about their opinions and needs. The project also included a series of training sessions on self-advocacy, civic activity and finding supporters for one''s ideas and activities. As part of the project, we also organized stakeholder meetings, thanks to which we could learn different points of view on our activities in stores, determine the needs of various stakeholder groups, and change existing procedures.
As a result of the actions described, we have created more friendly procedures for store customers and social workers, we have changed the way we communicate about the store by including posters and leaflets and providing a telephone number where you can find out how to receive food aid. Community stores have become a place for exchanging information, unofficial giveboxes, and at the same time they have unleashed in some of our clients the desire to act for the common good - they used the space of community stores to collect signatures for local petitions, look for supporters for local initiatives, etc. At the same time, some customers of community stores took over the role of volunteers helping in the stores or taking care of their aesthetics.