| "This
is the school - I do not want to glorify it too much -, gives
more than knowledge of literature and history. It educates the life and the self-reliance, and things like this. .. the matters, what must be calculated …we are indulged a little bit on one side, but we are not at all, on the other. It is strange, a lot of things are tolerated here, which at other places would annoy much the teachers, but there are much bigger expectations in other matters." "The reason and aim of existence of this institution is to help those, who have problems." 
|
| "The
basic problem was, that I haven't been taught to learn in the
primary and in the secondary school…" "This is not learning. They do not teach and we do not learn; they are not teacher, but pedagogues. We can talk with them, as if I asked what I wanted to know. But I would never ask anything by myself. That's my fault, the laziness…" "….the atmosphere is totally different here. It is more familiar, not like in the traditional secondary schools, where there is one teacher for 30 students. Here we have lessons in small groups, wit 2-4-6-8-10 persons. And what is more important: every student has a pair among teachers, and with him/her one can talk about all problems both those of home and those of the school." "… since we learn is small groups, the teachers can pay more attention to everyone … if I have a problem, the teachers treat me as a friend."
|
| "…I
was out, because I began to drink heavily. This work as a waiter
for me was not good at all.
To work among drinks … and it was a really hard work. … Everything is running, everybody's crying, waiter, waiter … I was about to shoot myself. Than I began wit beers during the work … 15-16 bottles a day… There was a lot of money … sometimes I got my salary in DM or $. But I was more and more out … "…my mother
got a flat, then we moved, but even this was a shit. We had loud
affairs with my mother, "When I was
two, my parents divorced, I lived with my mother, when I was five
she married again, "There were
affairs, …. my grandmother died, my friend died, so I began to
hang about, more |
| "…the
first and the most important reason was that I wanted to finish
what I have begun.
I have almost never finished anything I've started in my life." "I felt a
wish to justify I was not complete idiot … I have begun to think
that, |
| "We
were talking about the problems …. among other things … Surely
we were talking about positive things as well. Surely we were. So we were talking about everything going on in the life. About the future, a little about the past …." "They (the teachers) helped me in solving my problems, in learning and in development of my personality." "I got some advices, how could I solve my problems … and there were some problems I really could solve - maybe not exactly on that way, but on a similar one." " … they (the teachers) were dealing with me a lot. Individually, it's very important, because at an other school the teacher writes the math problem on the blackboard, it doesn't matter whether you understand it or not …" "… you know, one can see that he (the teacher) makes approaches to me with love, and he tries to explain me everything like this; he wishes to make me understand everything. It is completely different, and my approach is different, too..." "The teachers accommodate themselves to us, and I also accommodate myself to them … or I wouldn't say, I accommodate myself, it would be a lie … rather you accommodate yourselves to me." "The contract suggests some doubts, the feeling that something is wrong…" "…. if there were not the Tanoda, where I met people who have told me, you were a valuable person, you are clever, and it was worth dealing with you, therefore we supported you in learning, if there were no such people, who trusted in me and thought I was somebody - I don't know, how deep I would have gone."
|
| "The
Stop Group is built not clichés, sentences or empty words, but
on such a feeling which - I know it from the feedbacks - is missed by those, who live among others without having enough contact with them. I think the space and the time are not lacking for the desired meeting one another. Almost all activities of the Stop Group create occasion for this. We are not looking for the sense of life; maybe that's why it is possible. Who enter here, must leave all the hopeless…" "It causes a lot of difficulties to me that there is a process, a period in my past, which is not experienced by everybody; I could have come out by doing certain things, which shouldn't be done by others. I always have to bear down my laziness, I cannot stay in bed all the day, and I must do something for the sake of some happenings around me. My fortunate meeting with the Sobriety Maintaining Group made me turn into the direction of believing in the strength of community; we can strengthen each other's way not by licking wounds, but by discovering each other's self." "I also used to use drugs, so I used to behave bad with my parents, and they used to be upset on my behavior; looking backwards I think, I can tell parents how to behave with their addicted children, I can tell how to help them. And how to help themselves in this situation." "(The Theatre Station is) such a 'theatre' where the most stupid ideas can be transformed into treasure by filling them with emotions, where even my damnings are listened to, where my weakness can become valuable even though for a moment, and where I am among people who are able to accept all these."
|
| "The
Club first of all gave me a good company, an open conversation,
where everyone could tell everything about him/herself, and it was very important." ".. I got acquainted with old students of the Tanoda, and those, who wanted to get here. And I got acquainted with some teachers, as well…" 'I was accepted, I was cared about. That I was accepted, it's not enough. It is hard to say, that they loved me, but I always felt when I going in that I was perceived. Really, as if I have been SOMEBODY there." "There are always questions to everybody at the Club, and as if all these questions were about us. If someone answers a question, he speaks about himself. Some personal questions, spiritual problems emerge sometimes. They are taken by someone or not; if they are taken, one can ask more and more questions, if not, the theme can be changed."
|
| "…
later I got to know, that she has come in, Jesus, what a nightmare,
you know, she has come in instead of me! She has brought is the photos of my paintings …. I was very angry, it was humiliating for me …. all teachers were standing here, they were looking at my paintings, they were listening to me. It was really uneasy. They wanted me to tell something great. " "… my mother began to look for something, to look for the possibilities, because the eight classes of elementary school are not too much, in fact. Then she found the Tanoda. After a half year. Then she told me, there was this school, and I replied, that I did not want even to hear about any school, I was not interested at all, I was not interested in the world, the whole life, I did not want to do anything. Then, you know, she took me here; she said she knew I had never come here by myself. She took me here, I met Merci, I talked with her …" "(the first conversation) was very boring …. I remember …. I was not able to tell too much about myself … I was completely annoyed."
|
| "…
this staff attempts to make everyone know about everyone's situation
… the teachers come together and speak about students …. it is good that they speak about everyone, because if someone meets an emotional crisis, they try to help him/her together. Everyone has to know something about the others. This is a great help for them." "There is a teachers' conference in every school, but it is something else in the Tanoda …. it is good, because the teachers can form the image even of those students, whom they have no so close connection with." " … the helping staff … where the people can count on each other, …. where one can be sure that his /her partner thinks or does the same …."
|
| "Dark
businesses. very dark affairs. Many kinds of crimes, and drug
selling and a lot of money, a lot of drugs. Then the more and more serious addiction, and at the end the depravity on all levels. Then the recovery." "There were a lot of confusions. Drugs, and things like this …" I was a teenager. I was drinking, I was using drugs, I was going home very late, I had affairs wit the police … so I was not able to learn. Also the teachers were bad. It was not worth to go there. So I did not go." "Then … I began to use drugs more than before, and I was just hanging out. The folks who were not dealing too much with the school gathered together …. we were drinking in a park. We went together to get the stuff and so on. I have been living like this for a long time."
|
 |
Belvárosi
Tanoda Foundation 1083 Budapest, Szigony u. 37. tel./fax: + 36-1 303 6574 tel.: +36-1 210 0186  megallo@uze.net |
| BELVÁROSI TANODA FOUNDATION |
 After one
year of preparation, the Belvárosi Tanoda Foundation started its
activity in 1990. The
main job of the Foundation is looking for young people dropped out
from regular secondary schools, and providing for them aid and possibility
of finishing their studies. These youngsters have more disorders
than an average adolescent; they are manifested in many kinds of
life problems, e.g. family backgroudnd, drug and alcohol abuse,
mental or personality disordes, learning problems and so on. They
are expelled from their school because their teachers cannot tolerate
these special problems, the individual demands, and the unusual
personalities.The
Foundation maintains a secondary
grammar school 
without any fee, which takes governmental tasks as dealing with
these young, "deviant" people dropped out from regular
educational system, taking as main professional task their education
in a special, person-centered
way .
This task is fulfilled within the frame of a special educational
and personality-developing program.The
Tanoda admits from mentalhygienic point of view neglected young
people. Our students usually are low educated, professionally untrained,
mostly endangered socially as well, without any plans for the future.We take care
for such youngsters, who never get in touch with helping systems
working within the frame of traditional institutions (Career Advisory
Services, Educational Counseling Services, Family Counseling Services,
Drug Outpatients, Youth Offices etc.) The young people applying
to the Tanoda (app. 600 persons / year) do that according to advice
of people of the same age, living in the same sub-culture.The
Tanoda, as a helping institute, tries to react for all the symptoms
of deviancy
at one place. The secondary school studies, the possibility of doing
final exam, the re-socialization - these are the forms of the concrete
help. The certification of final exam got in the Tanoda means beyond the knowledge in traditional sense a better state of mental health, a real chance in life. This recovery itself means real profit for society, which can be expressed even in money. |
 |
| The Tanoda-method
resulted from continuous work. It is such a special helping-pedagogical
method, which can be learnt and applied for long in education and
care of endangered young people. The staff
is organized according to some important considerations, such as
the helpers' personality, the attitude towards young people, living
in the margin of society, capacity of teamwork and appropriate qualification.
The educational and supportive methods are usually different for
each individual, as the various personalities and problems demand
different approaches. Thanks to this unique methodology, during
the past 11 years the Tanoda has became the place of practical studies
for students of psycho pedagogy, social work
and pedagogy. |
 |
| The atmosphere
of Tanoda is attracting for both endangered teenagers and the professionals
dealing with them. We are in touch with some 100 people in every
year; we try to react their needs for activities and care. The essence
of our work is this continuous building upward from below, that
is, from the side of needs.Since
the beginning we have made a lot of improvements. In the secondary
school - as compared to the one in 1990 - we some different departments
according to the special needs of young people; it means different
ways of educational processes and helping contacts (we have a regular
school, we deal with education of drug-users staying at rehabilitation
centers, or recently leaving it, and education of young people staying
in custody).The
Tanoda
Club and the daily Duty
care about those young people, who turn to the Tanoda, but who are
not its students. There we are waiting for them with real helping
contact, counseling in life problems, school questions and social
affairs.The
professionals, relatives are regularly admitted. The possibility
of visits and consultations is always assured for everyone, who
also meets the problem of deviancy and wants to do something against
it.We
assist on, and we do by ourselves researches and methodological
work concerning the approach and the treatment of deviancy. |
 |
| The independent
program of the Foundation from the year 1998 is the Stop
Group
, which offers some activities
and personal attention beyond the school-time by organizing self-help
and creative groups
for the young people wrestling with life troubles and isolation.Most of our
students and applicants are affected by the problem of addiction.
For this reason in 1999 the Stop Group started a drop-in rehabilitation
program, offering all-day activity for addicted, for the moping,
passive young people, looking for company - and for those intending
to help them.With
our students, young people in care and colleges we regularly take
part in talks, demonstrations at schools and on professional conferences.Nevertheless,
our most important success is the continuous work since 1990; the
number of young people asking for our advice is growing; our services
are used maximally by those, for whom they were made, that is, by
youngsters looking for living-space, meaningful tasks, activities
and human relations. |
 |
| The basic
professional aim of the Foundation is the complex treatment - including
care, education, personality development and re-integration - of
endangered, deviant young people, dropped out from secondary schools
and the regular institutional system in general; they are lonely,
confused, floating into the self-destruction. As Marek Kotanski
says: "they are about being lost by life". Since the deviancy
basically is a mode of life, so our task is, through different services,
to show a new, positive way of living and to give a chance to try
that.
During the past eleven years we have got a real image of endangered
young people and the problems and deficiency of the institutional
system dealing with them. The most important feature can be the
bare number of the institutions trusted and valued as effective
by those, who are concerned.These
institutions are mostly characterized by reacting on only one dimension
of deviancy-problem, whereas those who are concerned would need
- as they themselves formulate precisely - full day treatment, the
possibility of doing different developing activities at one place,
that is: the complexity. Moreover, they would need to be treated
as personalities, not as "clients" or "patients";
they want to create real relationships, to get real tasks. |
| During
the past eleven years the BTA has become such a complex receptive
program and place which accept applicants without any specialized,
concretely formulated aim, only with the hope of personal support
and collective being. Though the different work-teams and programs
have their own image and content, through the personal contacts
there are crossings between them. |
 |
| During
our 11 years of existence, we experienced the deviancy as a multiple
phenomenon, a group of symptoms determining the whole personality
and guidance of life, that is, a choice of a certain way of living.
Its roots cannot be clearly defined, but on one hand, they are certainly
conditioned by the personality and on the other by the mechanisms
of social environment. The human climate, the way of living and
thinking, the system of values surely play role in its coming about.
So in care of deviancy all these factors must be present at the
same time. The deviant behavior is the result of certain processes
of socialization, that's why it can be changed only by an other
process. It cannot be reached by applying the problem- or treatment-oriented
- maybe effective in their places - methods and institutes. |
| In the
whole system of our Foundation's activities we try to accomplish
such an effectiveness that can affect the personality as a whole.
We do not want to apply one particular method, but we would like
to reach effects, offering and mirroring more positive patterns
of behavior through the deep connection with the persons. We do
not want to change young people, but we want to show them some other
ways - and the decision is theirs. Since the deviant behavior is
an inner decision, breaking-off must come from inside as well. The
care and the help can be effective only in this case. So the 'help',
according to our consideration means creating such an atmosphere,
which offers secure ground for changes of the individual. |
| During
the realization of our programs we strive to apply or adopt all
types of activities and methods that can affect the development
of the target group. The change of deviant conduct requires changes
in the individual's smaller and larger environment. We can offer
patterns for this. That's why we emphasize more than ever the acceptance
of relatives, teachers and professional helpers, the cooperation
with them, the talks about their problems (groups for parents, individual
consultations, self-help workshop for helpers, talks about prevention
of drug abuse). |
| This approach,
the effort for professional multiplicity means also, that we work
in such a transitory field - on the boundaries of education, youth-guidance,
social work, drug assistance etc. - which belongs to everywhere
and at the same time nowhere. This fact many times causes misunderstandings,
administrative or even professional problems. Nevertheless, maybe
in this lies the key of effectiveness: we organize our work according
to the approach the individuals with all of their problems, not
the problems themselves. |
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