Solidarna’s purpose and objectives are a mosaic of activities for strengthening the autonomy and solidarity of civic action aimed at the reduction of inequality and the expansion of the scope of rights and freedoms in all social domains in Croatia. They are formulated in three-year strategic and one-year operational cycles, depending on current opportunities for action and circumstances. While this kind of planning requires flexibility and openness, we in Solidarna believe that it is the only development path suited for a charitable organization that is still in its early days. Confidence, openness, and creativity are our strongest assets, which we are trying to channel into tangible, timely, and effective support for citizens in the protection of human rights.
SOLIDARNA’S strategic goals until the end of 2023:
1 Effective and flexible support to active citizens and human rights defenders in the form of targeted funding, counselling, education, and networking
2 Development of the culture of solidarity and philanthropy in the interest of human rights through cooperation across different sectors and the mobilization of citizens
3 Strengthening the charity’s resources with focus on targeted funding, operating expenses, investments, education, and networking.
Support to active citizens in the protection of human rights is about a fast and targeted support provided to human rights defenders, civil initiatives, and victims of human rights violations through small grants, ad-hoc charity drives, training, counselling, mentorship, ICT support, networking.
· Financial support to projects of civil society organizations and civic initiatives is available through open calls organized by the Active Citizenship in Croatia Fund (Fond za aktivno građanstvo u Hrvatskoj), which is managed by Slagalica Foundation in consortium with SOLIDARNA, Association SMART, and the Slovenian NGOs network CNVOS, and backed with EUR 8.5 million grant from countries of the European Economic Area.
· Emergency assistance is available via Solidarka fund, which has no permanent assets, but serves to launch emergency charity drives and transfer donations in partnership with motivated civic initiatives, in cases of critical need for humanitarian action and advocacy by victims, human rights defenders, and citizens going through a crisis.
Our programme for the development of culture of solidarity is based on a broad range of partnership initiatives involving many organizations, the business community, private foundations, the culture sector, and the media that are building the Croatian philanthropy environment for human rights, focused on what the country’s society needs in times of crises and to develop.
· Crisis philanthropy, although only a way to patch up a system, without changing it, is often the only tool left when human dignity or even life needs to be saved. Furthermore, charity drives are a valuable source of information about where the system has failed and how it can be improved. For this purpose, we have set up the #spasime fund as crisis support for the victims of domestic and sexual abuse, and 5.5 Fund for supporting the victims of earthquake.
· Development philanthropy is something that SOLIDARNA uses whenever it can to expand opportunities for creative action by every individual, regardless of their background, as well as for community-level social innovation. In this regard, we hold cultural creativity and education and social enterprise particularly important. This is the idea behind our Desa and Jerko Bakovic Fund for the education of children living in poverty and of the young in deprived communities, our Kultura u zajednici (‘Culture in Community’) programme supporting cultural activism in the service of development of community and human rights, and our programme Odvažna (‘Daring’) for empowering women in enterprise, particularly in rural and underdeveloped areas, in which we are a partner on the initiative of Ikea.
As a member of the Croatian Foundation Network, the ZaDobro.BIT! national forum of foundations, and network ARIADNE, and as a partner to Catalyst Balkans and the Active Citizens Fund (EEA and Norway grants), SOLIDARNA has been expanding its knowledge in cooperation with the European philanthropic community, learning the most from private foundations and community foundations advocating the protection of human rights, solidarity and social innovation.
Program rada_prosirena verzija