In Poland's first free election in 1990, Krzysztof was elected as mayor of an underdeveloped region with very high unemployment. As mayor, he experimented with several community development and unemployment relief programs. His first step was to focus on the problem of unemployment and to build good teams to work on the issue. After four years, he became convinced that much more could be achieved if he acted independently, so although he would have easily won, he decided not to seek re-election. Instead, he started his own citizen sector organization: the NIDA foundation. (Nida is the name of the region where Krzysztof works.) Many of the people he worked with as mayor joined Krzysztof and are now involved in his program, often on a pro bono basis.
Krzysztof's training and counseling programs differ according to the needs of the people he serves. He offers a week-long training course for those who aim to start new businesses soon and already have an idea in mind. Second, he offers a ten-month-long training course (with two sessions a week) that gives clients a more comprehensive background and works on generating new venture ideas. This program caters both to youth and to older unemployed people. Krzysztof and a few hired professionals have recruited forty volunteer businesspeople from various professions to facilitate the courses. Finally, Krzysztof's foundation offers a hotline for the unemployed and job counseling for both the unemployed and clients who have created jobs for themselves.
NIDA's courses offer specific training in subjects like labor and tax law, the market economy, self-government, the history of democracy in Poland, finance, and practical economic information. Clients learn how to use the Internet and "TIPS" and "EUROINFO" databases, and how to write résumés and present themselves in interviews. Follow-up programs range from simple consulting to an internship program that Krzystof organized through his own connections with the private sector. NIDA offers for-profit evening language courses to cover the cost of these training courses.
Community funds are the second crucial element of Krzysztof's plan They yield twenty percent interest rates, and function as endowments from which formerly unemployed, budding entrepreneurs (who have participated in NIDA's training programs) can be given loans. So far, 90 new loans have been approved for the unemployed and firms providing jobs to the unemployed, yielding around 600 new jobs altogether, according Krzysztof's estimates. Many of the starting ventures employ other formerly unemployed workers. Thus far, there has been only one default on a loan from the fund.
As Krzysztof sees it, a system of incentives sustains the fund: Businesses give money to enhance their public image and also to develop a supply of trained labor. Small local banks, often threatened by bankruptcy, are interested in contributing to the guaranteed funds because those funds bring them more ventures, accounts, and loan applicants. The banks themselves have agreed to manage the funds. Local governments are glad to cooperate because rampant unemployment means prohibitively expensive social service programs.
The following is one example of the success of Krzysztof's program: In 1996, he began working with an unemployed ex-worker from a collective farm that had gone bankrupt. The man's wife and five children – all also unemployed – lived in Janowo county in northwest Poland. The man had an entrepreneurial idea, but did not have the necessary management skills and was unable to procure a bank loan because the bank needed someone to endorse it. Krzysztof provided the appropriate training, and his fund endorsed a bank loan of $12,000. Now the man has 70 cows, rents several dozen hectares, has his own farming machines, and supplies milk to the Danone company. His whole family, along with many other unemployed people, work on the farm.
Krzysztof is expanding his project from the city of Nidzica and the surrounding county to the entire Nidzica region. To date, nearly 300 unemployed people have received help, mainly in the form of job training and counseling. Krzysztof has launched a second guaranteed fund, which involves local governments as core founders. He is enlisting the cooperation of local business people. Together, they set priorities for the funds and build a strategic vision for community development. Having successfully launched two funds, Krzysztof decided in 1998 to work toward starting a third fund for all of northwest Poland, which could serve as a model for other regions. He will draw on his positive relationship with the business community to involve twenty local banks and twenty corporations. The endowment is planned for $150,000.
To spread the idea to all of Poland, Krzysztof founded a national association of guaranteed funds throughout Poland. As chairman of this association, he wants to create l0,000 new jobs in Poland in ten years, and hopes to expand the idea throughout Central Eastern Europe. He will promote his idea in the media and will also publish promotion packages.