“From Neighbourhood to Community” (shortly: The Neighbourhood Programme) is a community organizing program connected to Gólya Cooperative and Kazán Community House in Budapest, Hungary.

The building of Gólya and Kazán is a 1000-square-meter space on the edge of a previously industrial site in an underprivileged and very diverse area of the city. We operate a community and event space, a bar/café, and a community house giving office and workshop spaces to more than ten organizations of the social and solidarity economy.

In the Neighbourhood Programme, we have been working with residents of our immediate neighborhood since 2019; visibly increasing the social coherence and citizen self-awareness among them. 

One of our long-term goals is to make space for more solidarity-based practices in the neighbourhood. We have several activities through which we can connect to middle-class residents in the neighbourhood, but we want to work on making our programmes more inclusive to low-income residents.

In the Neighbourhood Programme we thematize urban and housing issues and try to find community-led solutions to the residents. By this we do not mean direct housing provision, but we are trying to create opportunities for people who normally lack access to platforms where they can formulate their opinions on urban politics and social issues.