Application sheet

Name of the Applicant: Civitas Europica Centralis Foundation

ReVital: Knowledge Store of Economic and Social

Project Title: Processes of the Most Disadvantaged Micro-regions
of Hungary, in the Context of the Roma Question

Address and website of the H-1115 Budapest, Szentpéteri 10

Applicant: http://www.cecid.net/
Name of the contact person: Dr. Erika Törzsök

Description of the activities and achievements of the Applicant organization (max. 1500
characters):
In the situation given by the EU accession of the region’s post-socialist countries, the Civitas
Europica Centralis (CEC) Foundation considers its main task to analyze economic, political
and social processes of the Central and Eastern European region, having regard to the region’s
EU integration. To fulfill this mission the Foundation seeks to cooperate with institutions and
enterprises thinking of “Seamless Europe”. The Foundation wishes to promote horizontal
integrations with considering the aspects of regional and settlement development, and with the
strengthening of the civil society. It wishes to contribute to cooperation of border regions,
revitalization of regions fragmented by borders and creation of development strategies
including Roma development programs as integral parts.
Besides, the Foundation also deals with comparative nationalism research. The CEC defines
itself as the intellectual successor of the Public Foundation for European Comparative
Minority Research (EÖKIK). The EÖKIK pointed out, already in 2000, to the main
relationships of economic underdevelopment and spatial concentration of the Roma
population.

Date of application: 2 May 2011

Aim of the grant application: Financing the implementation of the ReVital project

Grant period: 1 July 2011 – 31 December 2011

Previous OSF grants: –

The 2011 organizational budget cannot be planned
Organizational budget:
since the Foundation have not had fixed revenue yet.
Amount requested: 10.000.000 HUF

Other grants available (amount,

–
source:
Short description of the project (max. 3000 characters):
(Problem, objectives, expected impacts, amount requested, sustainability after OSI grant)

1
Problem
Since the change of the regime poverty in Hungary has been greatly concentrated on small
settlements lagging behind. The causes of this process, of course, date back to much earlier
times, but the last two decades of the modern Hungarian social history have been
characterized by unprecedented migration trends: the migration balance of bigger towns has
been positive, while that of small settlements has become negative. This phenomenon can be
explained by sub-urbanization process, i.e. a significant part of the prosperous middle class
has moved to the neighboring villages having high and, because of moves, increasing status.
The consequences of the other phenomenon explaining migration trends are much serious: the
cities, with direct or indirect measures, push poor groups to further settlements with low and
decreasing status. These groups are getting further and further from the potential workplaces.

Objective
The objectives of the ReVital project are to describe:
• the “labor map”,
• the settlement structure and the factors positioning the settlements,
• the public education markets drawn by education sub-centers and effective use of
institutions,
• the catchment areas of non-Roma collecting-schools and the segregated collecting-
schools,
• the conditions of policy intervention in the case
of 4 Hungarian disadvantaged micro-regions: the Abaúj-Hegyköz, the Edelényi, the Encsi and
the Szikszói micro-regions.

The project will be the first step in the creation of an interactive geographical information
system, which will provide an overview of the demographic, ethnical, economic,
infrastructural and labor market characteristics of the most disadvantaged micro-regions of
Hungary and subsequently of other Central and Eastern European countries. Without the
knowledge of these characteristics the isolated policy decisions will be determined to fail. The
data to be published will be collected from publicly available databases and will be provided
by officially asked and volunteer persons. The searchable data will be projected to the
“Google Earth” surface to give an overview of their spatial distribution that will bring fitting
into wider relationships and result in rational regional development of institutions.

Expected impacts
The continuously updated “Micro-regional Knowledge Store” will provide reliable data for
professional decisions related to regional development and Roma policy. This database will
enable to show the micro-regions in space and time, in order to connect aid and development
policy strategies, programs and projects. The database will be used as a source of scientific
researches and it will give the opportunity for individual content editing too.

Amount requested

2
10.000.000 HUF

Sustainability after OSI grant

The pilot project will result in a methodology (know-how) and geographical information
system that will be used and updated later by actors (local governments, micro-regional
associations, employment agencies, enterprises etc.) directly interested in the given micro-
regions and communities. Thereby the result of the project will be an implementation tool of
the EU Roma Strategy to be accepted in 2011 and focusing on the development of
disadvantaged micro-regions.

Financial balance sheet of the previous year

Notes:
Attachment: - The Foundation is not a public benefit
organization.
- The 2011 organizational budget cannot be
planned since the Foundation have not had fixed
revenue yet.