Program

History – Community forum – Rationale – Alumni

ViabilityNet 3.0, one of Via Foundation’s programs, will run from 2017 to 2019. The vision of the program is a CEE region with resilient, viable, livable local communities, in which residents are actively involved in community affairs.

The program aims to impact local community work on these levels:

Changes in Local Communities

Firstly, we want to see specific and intentional changes and improvements in communities in CEE countries that lead towards more livable, viable and resilient local communities such as:

• changes focused on more livable communities, typically aiming at physical i.e. tangible changes

• “soft” changes such as an increase in people’s willingness to accept otherness, increased openness in communities, less fear and more hope, etc.

• changes stimulating community resilience, building the capacity of communities to withstand or adapt to change

• changes enhancing community philanthropy by supporting development of local self-sufficiency and building local resilience, strengthening social connections and enhancing civic engagement

In our support of these changes, we want to stress the importance of using existing community assets and strengths, whatever they may be in each community.

Emerging Local Community Leaders

Behind each community process and behind each community change there is someone who leads and inspires others to be part of the change. Recognizing the key role of leaders, we will continue nurturing and developing the leadership potential of emerging leaders from CEE countries who believe in private volunteer action, philanthropy and organic community development based on community strengths, assets and opportunities.

An important part of ViabilityNet 3.0 will be inclusion of past ViabilityNet participants to enable them to enrich new participants’ learning and to continue their own development. To this end, we will develop an Alumni network of ViabilityNet 2.0 participants and give them the opportunity to participate in key program events such as our annual Community Forum and regular study visits.

Organizations

We strongly believe that those of us who work in the CEE region need to make a concerted effort to connect with experience and thinking outside the CEE region. We are convinced that with the current immigrant crisis in Europe and the new wave of nationalistic movements we need to seek connections of various kinds and support one another.

The program benefits from the generous support of Charles Stuart Mott Foundation.