The mission of our association is to strengthen social participation through active citizenship and social capital. It can be regarded as a function of citizenship. We work to facilitate civic initiatives and support formal and informal communities to bring about changes that ensure a better quality of life. Another function of NGOs is to assume the role of social control in addition to their existence and goals. Our profession is based on an approach to empowerment.

The Dialogue for Communities Public Benefit Association was established in June 2002. One of the motivations for establishing the association is not to work alone, in isolation, as a lone wolf in the community-community development area in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, but to build a team and try to help the community in the life of settlements and micro-regions. In recent years, we have reached six micro-regions of the county, and we have worked and are still working in many settlements. As a result of our work, numerous NGOs were formed in places where we appeared, and we also organized trainings on the shortcomings that came to surface.

“The objective of the Association is to develop the settlements and micro-regions of Northern Hungary and the cross-border Hungarian-inhabited areas in order to strengthen social innovation, using the methods of community development. Strengthening the advocacy capacity of the local population, the local public, the local society, improving the quality of life by involving the resources of the people living there.” 

Our activities

• Elaborate and implement of the community development program of settlements, parts of settlements and micro-regions.
• Empower volunteers for community work, civic action.
• Develop training materials, organize, conduct and support trainings to help launch local action programs.
• Organize conferences, seminars, meetings to present the methods and possibilities of community development.
• Exploration and support of the local society and the forces and relationship systems driving the local society, publication of the results.
• Partnership building with professional organizations, settlements, municipal non-governmental organizations, foreign partners.

Operation of the Dialogue Association

Our 17-member membership is based in Miskolc. The members are mostly humanities professionals, typically with a professional background in the fields of public education, social sciences and anthropology with community approach. As the professional background is based on a 120-hour training, the emphasis in the professional capacity is not on this, but rather on the number of years spent in the field and the acquired, lived experience as a community developer. The main body of the association is the general assembly, which is made up of the members. Once a year, decision-making and conciliation for common goals take place at ordinary general meetings and at association meetings and meetings with different frequencies.