Poland: Agnieszka Rymsza

Agnieszka Rymsza manages the advocacy team at the Synapsis Foundation in Poland, an organisation that helps people with autism. As well as recently having been awarded her PhD and lecturing at the International School of Business Economics in Warsaw. She has also participated in the creation of Poland’s first social enterprise for people with autism.

The SYNAPSIS Foundation created the first social enterprise in Poland for autistic adults. Tell us about this experience ?
Currently the social enterprise hires 24 people with autism. It has been a great success and I was able to observe how the opportunity of being employed has changed these people’s lives. In Poland there are no system solutions for adults with autism and centers for people with disabilities are not appropriate for people with autism. Thus most people with autism in Poland go to special schools but their education is wasted because they have no further opportunities and usually end up going back home to their parents. It is not unusual for mothers to give up their jobs so that they can care for them. We created a social enterprise 100% tailored to the needs and possibilities of people with autism. Currently we are preparing a manual with our experiences to help others who would like to set up similar enterprises.

What were the greatest challenges you had to face?
The main challenge for any one wishing to copy us is economic. We built our social enterprise thanks to a European Union Project that we won (EQUAL), and it was very costly. Without significant investment it is impossible to set up and run such enterprises as people with autism require a lot of assistance. Most organizations in Poland cannot access such funding. In my role as advocacy manager I am now trying to convince Polish law-makers to create systems and financial solutions that will enable similar social enterprises for people with autism to receive government funding.

What about social enterprises in Poland, are they a growing reality?
Currently there are no special laws for social enterprises and so there are still very few of them. However several lawyers who are interested in the topic have developed the guidelines for a social enterprise law and consulted them with non profit actors. For now, social enterprise is more of a sociological term in Poland used to describe entities that combine social and commercial purposes and that have, as their main goal, the employment of people from groups that would otherwise be excluded from the labor market. So people who set up social enterprises usually use legal forms like social cooperative, foundation, or limited liability company.

You recently presented your PhD where you compared the problems and challenges of the nonprofit sector in Poland and in the United States ? what did you find?
The question I was really trying to answer was: why are so many more people employed in the non profit sector in the United States than in Poland? After analyzing various dimensions and factors I came to the conclusion that what makes these two sectors so different is that the non profit sector in the U.S, by seeking more and more stable funding, began, over time, to conduct activities that were traditionally commercial or carried out by government agencies. With this additional funding it has grown, but to a great extent it has lost it’s identity and stayed nonprofit only by name or legal form and not by function. Therefore, although by various indicators the American nonprofit sector is bigger than the Polish one, this does not mean that it performs the functions attributed to it any better.

The foundation you work for helps autistic people. How is theme of your PhD relevant to your work?

Well, it isn’t directly related. But I do work in the non profit sector and I am always in touch with my and other organizations. I have noticed the negative consequences that emerge from non profit cooperation with businesses or government agencies. I also see how many organizations in Poland are losing their original mission, spirit, atmosphere and are becoming government contractors or quasi-market firms that sell their services, like many for-profit firms. I don’t want to say that conducting commercial activities or that carrying out government contracts is necessarily bad  non profit organizations must seek funding to function at all and philanthropy has proved to be an insufficient and unstable source. Often non profit organizations have no choice, but many of them, over time are leaving their original mission behind, and I think this is sad.

How long have you been working in the non-profit sector?
Since the beginning of my professional career. My first job was in the non profit sector, and I have never moved away from it, even though I have also been teaching at university, which in Poland (unlike the U.S.) does not belong to the non profit sector.

What about volunteering experiences?
It depends on how one understands the term. Since childhood and up until the end of high school I sang at the church choir, and participated in many church-based groups, some charitable ones. But back then I didn’t look at these activities as volunteering, although they probably were! I liked these experiences very much. But I didn’t like my involuntary volunteering – my first job, where I had to be a volunteer because I couldn’t find paid job without work experience. I didn’t like the fact that I had to do the same things as others around me who were paid for what they did. I think many non profit organisations abused volunteering, especially during a time where there was huge unemployment in Poland and young graduates who couldn’t find paid jobs were hired on a voluntary basis even though the organisations could have afforded to pay them. So I am quite sceptical towards volunteering.

Despite these negative experiences, you still chose to work in the third sector. Why?
I never saw myself in business; I never wanted to make people think that by buying a certain type of car, washing powder, soap or whatever they will be happier. I always wanted to do something useful, help others, care for something. I also wasn’t enthusiastic about the government sector because of the amount of bureaucracy involved. So the nonprofit sector is the only sector that was left!

Is there a particular reason for your interest in disabilities?
Actually I never had a particular interest in disabilities. I started working for people with autism by accident. I worked for several NGOs, first teaching civic studies, then dealing with fighting world hunger and finally a research think-tank. I am also strongly interested in the environment and other social causes. When I returned from the Fulbright scholarship in the U.S. and was looking for a job, someone told me that the SYNAPSIS Foundation was looking for an advocacy manager – I applied, was invited to an interview, got the job and here I am! With time I became really involved in the disability issue, although, as I said, I got into it by accident.

Do you think that there are services for people with disabilities that the state is not able to provide? If so, who should  NGOs or social enterprises?
I think that most services for people with disabilities could be provided by the state but unfortunately and for various reasons they are not. For example, the state is not interested in satisfying the needs of minority groups (there are only 30 thousand people with autism in Poland) because it is not cost effective. Therapy of such people is very expensive and since they are not a large group political support for them is hard to find. This is where NGOs step in and provide services for marginalized groups who are excluded from receiving government support.

What are the greatest challenges faced by the disabled in Poland today and do you think that the third sector can answer these challenges?
There are many of them, too many to list them here. But, generally I would say that the greatest challenge is the fact that the government looks at people with disabilities as one homogenous group. There is no understanding of the different needs that people with different disabilities have. For example, laws that make it compulsory to build special access to public buildings for people on wheelchairs may be passed and with that it is assumed that a lot has been done for people with disabilities. Third sector organizations provide direct assistance to people with different disabilities and engage in advocacy activities that attempt to convince the government that it is neglecting certain groups of citizens from their assistance programs.

More info:
http://www.synapsis.waw.pl