Our approach. Understanding civil society
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AREDA contributes to the effort of people in Eastern European countries to design and implement reform processes. We work as a bi-directional interface between western development aid organizations and the civil society in Eastern European countries.

Our approach is somewhat different from the usual development aid for this region (i.e. economic reform, institutional reform and human rights). AREDA advocates the support of the civil society in Eastern Europe, for several reasons:

1.

Civil society is an autochtonous effort, based on local values and local perception of problems. Therefore its support helps us (and our western partners) understand people in our target countries. While this is in itself a fascinating experience, it also affects the feasibility of aid projects in all fields. There can be no sustainable development aid based only on the „gut feeling“ assumptions of western experts.

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The first people we ask about development in Eastern Europe are ordinary people in that region. If they want to plant a tree, it's ok for AREDA, if they want to edit a newspaper, it's ok again. Of course there are ethical limits we respect. The important thing for us is to understand their motivation and have a dialogue with them. A dialogue means we understand better the local priorities; this has a good influence on our ability to detect good projects. And it means local people in our target countries learn to see their situation with other eyes and maybe get one idea or two.

2.

The second reason is our conviction that development in Eastern Europe also has a political dimension, in the sense that the region undergoes a transition towards democratic systems as well as market economy.

The second reason is our conviction that development in Eastern Europe also has a political dimension, in the sense that the region undergoes a transition towards democratic systems as well as market economy. So here development aid should have a certain democracy aid component. By the way, this isn't exclusively pertaining to Eastern Europe: it is difficult to imagine sustainable development aid if the question of who decides about aid distribution (and how) is ignored, or left in the hands of local governments. Democracy aid is a way to ensure that this problem is solved by all the people in the target country in the way they consider appropriate.

Support of civil society is a bottom-up approach to democracy aid. The other approach is to help build functioning institutions by financing their infrastructure and the formation of their staff (institutional approach). The support of civil society is more difficult for aid organisations for reasons we detail below. Nevertheless we consider it the sounder approach, as it is more robust: new institutions must be understood, used, monitored and considered necessary by local people in order to perform their roles. For this to happen, they have to grow on a soil of values, needs, relational patterns and problem understandings of a genuine local type. This is what the civil society helps build.

3.

AREDA considers pluralism a crucial aspect of successful transition in this region. When the soviet period ended, pluralism was a very new concept to people in the region and some of them, confronted with economic difficulties are ready today to call for an authoritarian leader to stop the „disorder“ of reforms and provide everybody with some income. Economic reforms will be more or less worthless if the centralist pattern of relationships between state and society will be conserved. One advantage of civil society is that it has the ability to propose those relationships to the public debate. It is a guarantee for a pluralistic and open society: civil society is not a particular institution or group, but a variety of groups with various goals. Even if some of the support recipients turn out not to use the aid efficiently, the general pluralism in the respective society is enhanced.

AREDA offers a mix of practical and innovative means to understand and support the development of Eastern Europe through the strengthening of its civil societies. We tackle the specific difficulties connected with this approach:

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