First case-study workshop: Marton Aichelburg, Civic Enterprises (Hungary)
22.03.2010
Marton Aichelburg, 27, set up a Senior Mentor Program in Budapest, Hungary, with the aim of improving literacy and numeracy amongst children.
Professionals over the age of 55 volunteer to come into schools and provide one-to-one tuition and after-school clubs for mostly underprivileged children.
After setting up the scheme in 2008 Marton has now recruited 40 volunteers and expanded the service beyond Budapest to Sopron and will be launching in Slovakia shortly.
“I wanted to be a social entrepreneur”, says Marton. “I didn’t like the fact that my society was always asking what the government could do for it and not what it could do for the people. So I looked around for a simple, clear idea that could change people’s lives.”
Poor literacy is a huge social problem in many Eastern European countries and leads to other problems, such as unemployment, crime and drugs, argues Marton. So it made sense to use the world’s only growing natural resource – older people – to help address the problem.
But it wasn’t easy convincing people at first. “I wrote to 25 schools but only two responded”, he says. But he used those two schools to give the project credibility and held a press conference that received press and radio coverage. Academic experts gave their backing to the concept and Marton built up evidence proving that the tuition worked and was beneficial to the children.
“I had to have charisma to persuade people”, he says candidly. “It was part of my own personal development learning how to talk to people from all different types of background and political viewpoint. Now our volunteers include former communists, Bible class teachers, Jewish people, and university academics.”
Funding for the project initially came from private donors but once the idea gained credibility schools and educational authorities began offering the Senior Mentor Program contracts which secured funding for the next academic year.
“We’re on the threshold of a really big next step,” says Marton.
In the workshop delegates were keen to find out exactly how Marton had expanded his project from a pilot into a fully-fledged program, and he wanted to know how easy it would be to expand his idea into their countries.
Related
May 2012
May
21
Mon
August 2012
Aug
22
Wed
September 2012
Sep
9
Sun
