Scholarly record

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE EUROPEAN SYSTEM OF SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

A. Staroniek, A.Marzec, L. Pekarcik

Abstract

An important place in contemporary systems of social assistance in European countries, including Poland, is taken by non-governmental organizations (NGO). They collaborate with local governments in order to extend and improve quality of public services. Support activities of the organizations are mainly aimed to help groups threatened with marginalization and social exclusion, whose members find it difficult to cope with meeting life needs because of their age, disability, poverty, or life helplessness. Associations and foundations attract human potential, its resources and abilities to achieve the objectives with non-profit character, providing people with help in difficult life-related situations. In the international law, these organizations do not group countries but natural or legal persons, act according to the national law, are established based on civil law contracts, are private and founded based on the initiative of their founders and act in public interest. The most of non-profit organizations are present in Scandinavian countries and Germany, with 200 NGOs per 10,000 people. In 2017 in Poland, there were ca. 20,000 of foundations and 100,000 associations. NGOs' activities are an important supplementation of the work of public administration in terms of providing social services and equalization of life opportunities for people threatened with marginalization. This problem is topical and important from the social standpoint since the basic principle of living in society is the principle of subsidiarity [7].

Publication details

Back to publication list