Snapshot from Hungary: How Our Mentor Program is Helping Nurture Student Participation
/“It’s so important for us to know that we don’t have to do this alone. Because even if we read all the books about the method, it doesn't mean we’re able to do it practically.”
Miklós Merényi and Ágnes Molnár share a love for the potential of participatory budgeting (PB). With the Viktor Orbán in his 21st year as prime minister (along with his highly centralized party power structure), government reform has been pushed to the purely local level—and even there, public participation in government struggles to take root in often-barren soil. But Miklós, an anti-corruption campaigner, and Ágnes, a youth organizer, see hope in PB.
The pair are teaming up to launch an experiment with PB among high school students in Debrecen, the second largest city in Hungary and the “fortress” of Fidesz, Orbán’s right-wing, populist political party.
K-Monitor, Miklós’ anti-corruption-focused NGO, and Alternatív Közösségek Egyesülete (AKE), Ágnes’ youth-oriented community development organization, joined People Powered as member organizations in 2020. People Powered then assisted them in securing funding from the U.S. embassy in Budapest. Those monies will go to Medgyessy Ferenc High School, with students themselves deciding how the funds are allocated.
But, Miklós and Ágnes say, they wouldn’t be as confident in their ability to launch the first school-based PB in Hungary if they didn’t know they would be backed every step of the way by a People Powered mentor: Madison Rock, senior program coordinator for civic health with the Center for the Future of Arizona in the United States.
How are mentors and mentees matched? Just what does mentorship involve? And what does each party get out of the program? We will interview this threesome periodically over the next year or so as their relationship evolves, offering an inside perspective to others who are trying to launch new programs in challenging contexts.
“We are seeing quite a progressive push to generate participation among citizens.” (Ágnes Molnár)
How did you discover PB?
Miklós: I'm a trained political scientist and anti-corruption activist. I fight the bad guys who want to steal state money, which is a huge problem in Hungary. It is not really a functioning liberal democracy, it's more like a hybrid regime. You cannot, as an NGO, fight the central government because they don't want to follow the rules. My job has been all about negative stories, things you cannot change in the short term. This is why we started to work more closely with local governments and I began to read about participatory democracy. I learned about People Powered through Sándor Léderer (K-Monitor’s managing director). He was chosen as an Obama Fellow (a leadership-development program for civic innovators), and that’s how he was introduced to it.
I think I was the first or the second person here to write about participatory budgeting in Hungarian; people here didn't know about it at all. I wrote a booklet about PB and brought it to the public consciousness. So many people have read it now and we have several municipalities using participatory budgeting. I'm not really happy with how some of them use it, because they are very focused on public relations and not deliberation. It’s a start, though, and that’s why we liked Ágnes’ proposal to try PB in a new setting.
Ágnes: I participated in a different fellowship program in the U.S. in 2015, for community organizers, and I too became familiar with PB there, in New York. From that point on, I was in love with the method of PB. But I’d never had a chance to try it. It's really hard in Debrecen to have civic engagement; we have to use different kinds of ways to reach out to people. Obvious advocacy and demonstrations don’t work. For example, if you organize demonstrations, people don’t go because they fear that someone from the (Fidesz) party will take photos of them and kick them out of their jobs. The biggest employer is the municipality.
But the good news is that in Debrecen nowadays, we are seeing quite a progressive push to generate participation among citizens. That's why we decided to bring in new civic engagement methods like PB, and maybe soon, citizen assemblies and legislative theater. We know we’ll eventually need the municipality’s support, but we want to bring them in by showing them that it really works. We hope that organizations in other municipalities will then do the same. So, I contacted my mentor in the U.S. who had introduced me to PB. She introduced me to Josh (Lerner) and he connected me to Miklos! He was really open to try it in high schools and we decided at that moment that we will find a source of funding for it.
“We come from different contexts, but the challenges of garnering buy-in from local decision makers are very similar.” (Madison Rock)
Madison: I work for a nonprofit organization called the Center for the Future of Arizona (CFA). Our mission is to bring Arizona residents together to build a stronger and brighter future for our state. Core to that is asking the people who make this state their home about the priorities that matter most to them.
In 2009, we partnered with the Gallup organization to do a first-of-its-kind, representative survey of Arizona residents about our shared aspirations and hopes for the future of our state. We just released our second decennial Gallup Arizona report and the results contain some really awesome data and insights; over 70% of Arizonans agree on seven shared public values and 42 action items to drive our state forward. Civic engagement is one of those priorities.
What brought me to PB, particularly in schools? I got involved as an undergraduate student. I took a class with Daniel Schugurensky (professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and a Global PB Research Board member) and I volunteered to help with a workshop with the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP). I fell in love with the process! CFA is a local partner of PBP and I was super fortunate to be able to stay on and help with the first PB pilot in schools. Since graduating, I’ve taken on a full-time role, seeding and supporting school PB across the state, growing the initiative from a small pilot of five schools to 47 across six cities in Arizona, with almost 60,000 students going through the process on an annual basis.
What are the special challenges you face?
Miklós: The Hungarian schooling system is really centralized. The institutions are not autonomous; they don't even have a bank account. So, we will not distribute the school board's funds; instead, we will use the U.S. embassy grant money. This is still good because municipalities and parent councils often contribute additional money to meet the schools’ needs. This is our opportunity to show how PB can successfully engage students. We just need at least one working example, which is documented, of local use.
“I fight the bad guys who want to steal state money, which is a huge problem in Hungary.” (Miklós Merényi)
Ágnes: The thing I think about most is whether we can make PB known and popular among everyone, so the participants are representative. In bigger cities like Budapest, where we will present the results, there are people who are already interested. Here, no. But I have seen from the work that People Powered shares that when you invest a lot of energy in bringing together ordinary citizens, officials and experts, you can achieve huge success. I'm not worried about people being able to catch up, if we create a process in which they have the chance to understand the dilemmas and financial restrictions. Anyway, what’s the alternative? If we leave it this way, we’re saying we’re okay with no democracy in schools. Then, in the next 50 years, nothing will change. This is why it's important to do experiments like this.
To what extent do you think a mentor will help?
Ágnes: It’s so important for us to know that we don’t have to do this alone. Because even if we read all the books about the method, it doesn't mean we’re able to do it practically. For example, when I was learning about community organizing, I felt like I really knew the methods. But when I started to do it, I had many, many questions. That's why we are confident now, because we have a mentor who knows what to do when we get stuck and can tell us what to watch out for. I hope Madison can help us evaluate the process during the process, so we can see ourselves from the outside. I also want to learn more about how to convince decision makers to invest in this process. I actually like that Madison is from outside our country; sometimes I feel we get a more creative look at things from the perspective of another system.
Miklós: I agree. I had a previous People Powered mentor, who works with a municipality in Dubrovnik (Croatia), and it was super important for me; I had so many questions because I didn’t have any real-life experience. And now, Madison offers us something different; she specializes in school PB and comes from the NGO world, like us—not the state.
Madison: This is my second mentee pairing too. The first person I mentored was in Michigan (USA), and I worked with him to pilot PB in his school. This is the first time for me to work with mentees outside the U.S. It's been interesting to dive into the local context, because then we can adapt the resources and lessons learned here in Arizona to their experiences. Our first meeting was introductory: We talked about the objectives for their process and the potential challenges--what’s worrying them as they get ready to implement the process. The second time together, I shared a bunch of resources that will help them plan and prepare for the launch of their process. We worked through their questions about preparing for their first meeting with school leaders.
Is it a challenge mentor/learn from people from other countries and cultures?
Madison: Sure, there's a difference in context. In Arizona, for example, we have a very decentralized education system. But the challenges of garnering buy-in from local decision makers are very similar. It’s critical to make sure that the folks who hold the purse strings are fully bought in and committed to implementing the projects after they are approved. The first year is typically really challenging and the second year gets easier. By the time you're in the third year, sometimes the people who pushed back the hardest in the beginning are the ones who are now the advocates and bring others along. I think that’s due to the trust that develops between students, teachers, and district and school leaders. Open lines of communication and relationships are built. Folks who work in procurement and purchasing don’t generally meet with students on a regular basis. But they do that through PB. So, those relationships begin to form and people start to see value in the process.
Miklós: That’s what we want for the future! We want to stay under the radar in the sense that we don't want to make it like a challenge to the current system. But some teacher associations will be great partners because they are more open minded. The director of the school is also a very important player. And most stakeholders don't like the undemocratic and autonomy-deficient nature of our schooling system. So, they’ll understand the point with this project.
Now read the second installment in this series, as we follow Madison, Miklós, and Ágnes on their mentoring and PB journey.