Barka: a leading force for change

Today Barka is one of Poland's strongest and best known non-profit organizations, with a staff of 100 people and 20 community homes helping over 500 people.

Formally known as The Barka Foundation for Mutual Help, the agency has won numerous awards for its work to help the homeless, and has added new programmes in job training, social education, and shelter construction.

In Poznan, the organization opened a live-in school where homeless people take courses to increase their job skills. Run by Ms. Sadowska, the Barka Kofoed School is founded on the self-help principles pioneered by Copenhagen's Kofoed School, created some 70 years ago. It offers, among other instruction, workshops where the homeless can learn the basics of housing construction that allow them to later build their own homes.

Refurbished manor, now Education Centre

The organization has also set up a Regional Center for Social Education in an old manor located on the same compound as the Chudopczyce community, which used to function as the offices for the government farm. Beautifully refurbished with funds from a Henry Ford Conservation award, the manor houses a programme to teach people from all over the world, but especially from eastern Europe, about the community's self-help system and how to blend the goals of sustainable human development with environmental preservation. Many of the participants use the Barka model in tackling their region's own struggle with the problem of former State cooperatives.

Another focus for the organization is helping to find employment for the formerly homeless people living in Barka communities. So far, work has been obtained in a variety of businesses, including recreation centers and construction sites, as well as temporary events such as the 2000 Poznan International Trade Fair. According to Ms. Sadowska, the Fair's organizers requested Barka workers again for this year's event because they are more trustworthy than other workers.

Barka workers at Trade Fair 2000

"The head of the company visited us and told us that he has big problem with the people who check tickets because normally people are not honest -- they take money, they are corrupted," she says. "But often people have a different perspective by being connected with Barka. They know that if they do something wrong, they would lose their chance to benefit from our help with the flats, with work opportunities." But Ms. Sadowska quickly adds that her organization can't care for all of the country's homeless, and that there are still about a million ex-government farmers in desperate need of help. "What is important is to have awareness here in America of the big social problems," she says. "Before, we were fighting about political rights, free elections. But now social rights are threatened, are broken. People just don't know what to do. What we need now is to strengthen non-profit organizations."