CIVIC ADVICE CENTRE

It is over a month since Gdynia set up Civic Advice Centre. It is a place where the citizens are able to get confidential and free of charge advice in any subject. We only show possible ways of solving the problem and clients take care about their problems by themselves.

One of the Centre's aims is transforming the society into a civic society. A man of the civic society is able to take care about him; he only needs to know all possible ways of acting. He does not expect somebody else to do his work.

Most of advisors are law students but there are some sociologists, educators and economists. An advisor listens to the client, asks questions and defines the problem. The last part is sometimes very difficult, because clients have too many problems they want to solve at the first meeting. They often treat us as the last hope. Sometimes people just feel lonely and they need somebody to listen to them.

The Centre starts working at nine. First we check if there are any problems to solve for a particular day. Usually we check the date of client's next meeting and the urgent cases are done at the first place. One group of advisors work with the cases, which means they read textbook, flick through codes and acts, and call the governmental and non-governmental institutions to find all possible ways of acting for the client. Other advisors admit clients and listen to their problems or pass on finished pieces of advice. In advising process it is not important that one advisor admits the client, the second one finds solutions and the third one passes on the advice. There are some people who are in contact with the same case so it is one form of control. It is very easy to establish who admits the client and ask this advisor for more information that may not be written on the sheet.

During this short time of activity we have admitted about 350 people. It is a lot comparing to other centres in Poland that have about 200 people a year. The most popular problems are cases connected with housing, institutions and family.

Civic Advice Centre was set up by a non-governmental organisation "RAZEM" association with the financial support Gdynia City Council.