CSF publication - Civil Society Forum - CEE Trust

Inspiring active citizensActivism forwhat?The problemis that peopledont think theycan achievesomethingable to say what our goal is in 10 years and look at what we want from this activism- how are we going activate people? We will never be able to activateanybody, if people don’t have an idea of where it is we are going - it is activismfor what? Just for the sake of activism? The goal is to get to the point where wedon’t have to do this. We have to start from: How do we get there?” “How dowe activate ourselves and people around us to get to where we want to be?”P: I don’t think that people do not feel engaged; the problem is that they donot believe that they can achieve something - so the point is whether our messagewill be heard. The problem with these small groups on Facebook or othersdiscussing and debating their own needs and issues is that they don’t know towhom to address their message and they do not believe that they should getan answer. Our problem is how to push the institutions to answer them. I don’tbelieve it’s a matter only of educating people, of course it’s important pushing,but this activating andengaging them for me islike the communists puttingconsciousness in theheads of the poor masses.I hate this discourse.We could try, everyoneof us who feels engagedin some cause to pushinstitutional reform, whenthere is a petition messageeven of Facebook,the institution to which itis addressed should answer.It’s a matter of institutionalreform and it’sa matter of institutionalizinga specific mechanismof e-governmentand e-democracy, becausethis is the future,these debates on theinternet.Too pushy?Missing thegoal?P: Two things: the first one is results and the other one is trust. I would say thatour society as a whole and also us as civil society have come to a stage wherewe are also results oriented: we have to do this in the next half a year becausethe donor, partner or the grant says it; we have to rise 15% of the civic engagementuntil year 2009 e.g. Because of that we are rushing and trying to achievethe goal and the result - that we actually miss it. Because if you go to the basichuman nature level, I think that people feel when you want to push them intosomething and this is why your mother may have said: “Why should I give this2%?” because she might have felt that civil society is pushing her “Give us moneyand we will do something with it!”. I think this is where the trust comes in, thehuman trust. I would say that civil society would be more successful if we wouldset a goal and try to achieve it in the long term. If you’re doing something longterm, people notice you and you can acquire more trust from people. If you’redoing something for 6 months, you’re just getting the PR’s message out and42