Tasks of integrated community spaces and community services
By now, integration of and access to community services in one building is becoming common and exemplary and shows the way to follow for those local leaders who have not adapted integration even at intellectual level as yet. Creation of the infrastructural conditions is indispensable for the operation of multi-functional spaces, but the ’brick’ is not everything. The wall is only an opportunity. It is only an opportunity that we have to fill with content based on different professional considerations and local needs. With the involvement of the community, we have to assess the needs and requirements of the settlement, map the existing services and generate cooperation in those areas where integration is possible. The purpose of multi-functional community places is to mobilise people living in the settlement to leave their homes and implement measures creating opportunities and granting support with the introduction of services reaching different target groups in order to compensate the disadvantages of the families living there and promoting the implementation of equal opportunities.
With the socialisation of community cultural centres, the community space has to offer room for the initiatives of the inhabitants. If we grant confidence and opportunities to the individuals, those responsible and doer citizens will be active, who do not only expect the provision of services but also do something for themselves, their small and/or bigger neighbourhood and along the lines of these positive values, they will also become generators of these services.
The premise of community services is that they have to align with the constantly changing and permanently renewing social expectations. The operators of integrated community spaces have to take into account the emerging needs and the portfolio of the services have to be changed accordingly with due consideration to financial constraints.
The integrated community and service areas, by creating opportunities for development for the active people, offer for the citizens the locally relevant services in one space and with their regular opening hours make it accessible for them. Multi-functional spaces have to be open to all those services for which there is local need, from conversations between two persons to programmes mobilising the majority of the local population and reaching several hundred participants.
Proposals on programmes and occasions for disadvantaged or less reached target groups and the increase of community activity in addition to creating infrastructural equal opportunities of community spaces:
- organisation of prevention programmes (drug use, crime prevention, etc.);
- development and operation of programmes compensating disadvantages (organisation of leisure time programmes);
- in addition to free access, creation and development of the multi-functional facilities of the community spaces and buildings (sport grounds, playgrounds);
- establishing relations with the churches, competent authorities, police;
- development of network-based cooperation in the region or circle for the purpose to access, to the maximum possible extent, the target groups and facilitate that the cultural institutions help and complete the fulfilment of their respective tasks by means of exchange of experiences;
- assuring the exchange of information and knowledge for the experts at different forums and information programmes;
- promoting the establishment of civil organisations, then professional support to these organisations;
- provision of information about active leisure time programmes and opportunities for the endangered target groups;
- propagation of alternative leisure-time activities;
- involvement of the families in leisure-time activities.
Consequently, the integrated community and service areas, in addition to creating opportunities for development for the active people and those who want to do something, are destined for the following by organising the necessary community services in one building: offer for the citizens the locally relevant services in one space and with their regular opening hours make these services accessible for them. The purpose of integrating different services in one space is the extension of community development functions, including theatre performances, meetings of NGOs, provision of information for business entrepreneurs, small sports events, regular, daily meetings of the members of a youth or pensioner club. Multi-functional spaces have to be open to all those services for which there is local need, from conversations between two persons to programmes mobilising the majority of the local population and reaching several hundred participants. The integrated community space is not a theatre, not a club, not a library, not even an office, but it is the environment gathering almost all the community functions of the settlement or small town.
This article based on the following document: