Waclaw Czakon

Wacław Czakon is helping to shape educational policies for children and young people by empowering them to launch social ventures and then leveraging the positive impacts of those ventures with policymakers.

Waclaw challenges at-risk young people to become active, engaged citizens. He creates a social structure through which they become community leaders in introducing positive changes in local environments. Engaging young people in targeted activities, Waclaw equips youth with self-confidence and job skills. His effort addresses three dimensions of the personality of young people–moral, social, and intellectual. His ultimate aim is to convince young people that all the social activities they undertake should first benefit the public and then meet personal objectives. Also, he reinforces the fact that improving the local community benefits many and meets common goals. Waclaw engages partners like schools and other institutions in the process of creating better systems of teaching civic responsibility. Utilizing connections with churches, parishes, social movements, and citizen organizations, he has an authentic influence on education policies. The involvement of partners is especially important in spreading his ideas.

Families and schools in Poland are not meeting the needs of young people. With the growth of social and economic problems in small towns, including rising unemployment among parents and the decreasing attention parents are able to give their children, there has been an increase in the number of troubled kids, particularly in rural areas and small towns. Without strong mentoring at home, young people face a critical of lack of values and low self-esteem. And although schools are overloaded with didactic content, they have limited overall impact. Research about Poland's rural areas' development indicates that in the mid-1990s more then 30 percent of young people needed support from other people in making basic decisions and solving personal problems. This indicates insufficient positive influence from family and school, a reality that is often called a "white spot" in the educational system and family environment.

In Polish society, there is a significant lack of trust in young people and a lack of faith in the ability of young people to conduct various activities and ventures responsibly. Hence, young people do not have the opportunity to develop the project management and people skills required for making a difference in their communities. A number of citizen organizations attempt to tackle contemporary youth problems, but they focus on providing after-school or temporary summer activities; these efforts do not aim primarily at instilling values like the respect for others in the community. As every nation, state, and community relies on young people to assume responsibility for social and economic changes in the society, the challenge is to introduce effective ways to equip them with the requisite skills, values, and abilities.

Waclaw's experiences in challenging and encouraging youth to organize summer camps, trips, and joint learning opportunities helped form the basic principles of the Youth Academy, an organization he founded in 1999. Waclaw's purpose was to shape a program that would respond to real needs of young, engaged, socially aware people who are ready to face the responsibilities of their current world. The program participants range from 7-years-old to postgraduate.

The Youth Academy program consists of three stages. The first stage focuses on participation in academy activities whereby youngsters are involved in various social projects for the benefit of their community. This stage lasts two years and includes practical and theoretical components. The practical component involves organizing activities in sport, theater, education, and project management. The theoretical part is based upon three themes: social involvement is needed and pays back; we can improve our community; and young people need skills to act effectively upon their ideas. As an example, a group of teenagers monitored and researched their local surroundings and came up with a report describing destroyed benches, missing dust bins, and ruined buildings. As the maintenance of those places is the responsibility of the local municipality, the report was handed over to the municipality, along with a petition to introduce improvements in those areas. Each project is accompanied by a media event in which teachers, principals, parents, and local municipality representatives participate. Youth and children present their plans for the following year, and then later report their results and describe how they met their goals. Waclaw emphasizes the importance of media presence because it leverages the impact of the activities and builds young people's confidence.

The second stage involves the spread of the program via the participants themselves. The dissemination of the program throughout the region and beyond is carried out by the Higher Course Group, past participants in the Youth Academy who mentor and nurture new participants' projects in new geographic areas.

While the first and second stages of the Youth Academy are focused on empowering young people to take action and to disseminate Waclaw's idea in other areas, the third stage concentrates on organizing and gathering various institutions and individuals around the idea of empowering and activating young people in their local surroundings. This stage is dedicated to the integration of organizations, institutions, and individuals to value and support young people's potential to introduce change. While creating space for young people's involvement in local communities, Waclaw also influences the municipalities in shaping policies for young people. The third stage will begin in 2003 and will be a permanent component of the program.

The uniqueness of the program is also embedded in its construction, as it embraces the life-cycle of a young person, focusing on everything from spiritual attitudes to physical development. However, it also respects the individual character of each person. And Youth Academy is a dynamic structure that allows for changes and adjustments based on local needs. The long-term perspective assures continuous learning both for the students and for the mentors.

In 2000 Waclaw developed a system of accreditation for the Youth Academy program. Not all Youth Academies met the standard and those that failed to earn accreditation did not carry on with the program. Out of 24 academies operating in 2000, 16 were formally approved through this process. To sustain accredited programs, an adult currently assumes the financial responsibility of fundraising for each chapter. It is the goal of the program, however, to have trained young people prepare proposals and raise funds.

Waclaw is spreading his ideas through printed materials demonstrating methods of involving young people. He stresses that it is not only the concept of involvement that he is spreading, but also the concrete methods of prompting involvement. In 2001 Waclaw started a training for instructors and educators from Ukraine.

During the period of martial law in Poland, Waclaw experienced repressions from the communist regime. Because he had distributed Solidarity pamphlets, he lived in hiding for 14 months. This time gave him insight into how much you need to rely on other people. He recalls often how many people, without looking for any profits, helped him and supported him when he was hiding. Throughout his work with young people, he has endeavored to share such generosity. Coming from a strong family, having a happy childhood, he could not stand that other children did not have the same opportunities to grow up surrounded by love and understanding. His personal positive experiences prompted him to help other children by equipping them with values and attitudes for life.

Waclaw was always a creative person. For example, while in school, he founded a monthly school magazine. The school was proud of the magazine, and it brought a lot of recognition to the school managers. Proving his entrepreneurial skills, Waclaw eventually sold the magazine.

In the early 1980s Waclaw and a group of other passionate people decided to work with youth from marginalized families. In 1982 Waclaw gathered a group of students in psychology and history to work with a group of young people ages 8 to 18 who came from difficult backgrounds. The group had no discipline, was extremely rebellious, and caused serious problems at school. These two years of constant struggle with the group was a major experience that shaped Waclaw's thinking about the development of young persons and the relationship between them and educators. In 1985 Waclaw dedicated his time to education studies. Determined to work with young people, to help them to change their environment, Waclaw was searching for the best methods of effective education–what should be the goals, what should be the methods to achieve those goals? Among other things, he learned that the group needs to be mixed with children from healthy families. And every group of young people needs goals, norms, and rules to structure their personal and communal lives in a positive way. Eventually he saw the need to create a program that took advantage of what he had learned and that could be transferred to other places where similar problems exist.

Waclaw cooperates with Andrzej Juros, an Ashoka Fellow specializing in innovation in higher education.