The Eger Foundation of the Fund to Support the Poor was established in 1989 with the aim of providing support and assistance to families living in poverty and exclusion. In our name, goals and objectives, we consciously embrace the values of the Fund to Support the Poor (SZETA), which was established informally and illegally in 1979. The objectives and instruments set out in the founding document have become significantly broader and more complex, as the social problems of that time have not disappeared during the more than 30 years that have passed since then, but they even have strengthened and deepened.
Our core values and objectives are social equality, i.e. the reduction of social disparities, freedom, the possibility of a life free from constraints, solidarity, mutual responsibility towards each other, justice, i.e. the fair distribution of public goods, and compensation for the disadvantages created by the market.
We have 30 years of experience behind us. We believed and still believe that the lives and fate of those living in poverty and deep poverty can change if they receive external help and resources. Over the past decades, our Foundation has done its utmost to ensure that these resources – money, knowledge, information, contacts – reach poor communities, families living in poverty, young people and children through civic action.
In 1997-1998, we built our community house with the help of grants and donors in the Roma settlement of Felnémet, near the Béke Settlement, close to the people we want to help and to whom we want to make our services available.
For years, our daily activity has been to support the early development of the children living in the settlement, to help them in their learning, to support their school progress, to organise their leisure and cultural programmes. We also provide assistance and tools to help parents and families with their daily problems, we organise community activities, provide washing machine and bathroom facilities, and have been running camps every summer since 1990.
Our school programme, the „Let’s go together! Felnémet Student Network” has been running since 2013. Within the school framework, not only do we prevent school drop-outs and drifting into crime, but we also help and motivate children living in the settlements to acquire vocational and school-leaving qualifications.
Within the framework of our EU-funded projects, the unemployed were able to acquire vocational training in many disadvantaged settlements. People living there were encouraged to take action, to take care of themselves and to organise themselves as citizens. We implemented settlement clearance programmes in three municipalities (Szomolya, Sirok, Sály), which resulted in many people finding new homes, better living conditions, completing primary education, and getting vocational training.
Between 2004 and 2006 we fought for the construction of public utilities, water, sewage, gas, asphalt pavement and road at the end of Béke street as well.
Between 1998 and 2012, in accordance with the Child Protection Act, our foundation – under a supply contract with the city of Eger and later with the Eger sub-region – operated a children’s temporary home, which welcomed children and young people who had left their families due to crisis situations.