Community relations w cieniu familoków. O organizowaniu społeczności lokalnej w perspektywie budowania relacji między instytucją a otoczeniem. Casus Programu Aktywności Lokalnej w kolonii Emma w Radlinie

Abstract

Community relations in housing estates. On organising local communities in the context of building relations between an institution and its environment. The case of the Local Activity Programme in Kolonia Emma in Radlin.

The article provides a description of a Local Activity Programme in the historic Kolonia Emma estate in Radlin Silesian Province run by the local Social Welfare Centre with regard to community relations practices.
The author examines definitions of community relations, referring them to social welfare practices in a concrete form — organising a local community. As an example, the author uses the Local Activity Programme implemented in a 19th-century “estate-town” in Radlin. This estate so-called sponsored estate — designed as a modernist symbol of social advancement of the employees of a mining company in Radlin — today has become a place of the greatest social exclusion risks. Similar social problems can be observed in other estates of this kind, in e.g. Zabrze, Katowice or Ruda Śląska. The only institutions trying to build local community relations and helping to restore former social functions to the estates are social welfare centres run by the local governments.
Drawing on qualitative research, the author paints a picture of a social welfare institution operating beyond the field of ordinary welfare benefits, building community relations, helping the local community to develop and preventing further exclusions.