On the 1st of March 2018, Office for European Expertise and Communications and Baltic Internet Policy Initiative (BIPI) presented the results of the survey «Awareness of and involvement into the activities of civil society organizations and informal initiatives in Belarus» targeted on Belarusian internet audience.
Presentation of the survey (full version).
The survey was conducted for the second time, which gives an opportunity to compare the results of 2017 and 2018. This year there were 10 questions (compared to 5 last year). In particular, internet-users specified the types of organisations to which they would agree to donate 1% of their tax, estimated the usefulness of electronic (online) petitions, and answered who is to solve local communities problems.
Only 6% of the respondents answered that they are actively involved in the activities of civil society organizations or informal initiatives; 15% – participate from time to time; 33% – know about this opportunity, but do not use it. These very respondents (2279 out of 4278 persons) were the ones, who knew about the existence of civil society organizations and initiatives. They became the target group of the research.
Trade unions, youth and sports organisations are the most known in Belarus, while the least known organisations are the ones engaged into regional development and work with local communities.
48.2% of the respondents indicated that they receive newsletters from public organizations or read news. A trend, revealed in the last survey, remains unchanged: women are more likely to donate money to socially useful initiatives, while men sign online petitions more frequently. Young people aged 15-24 volunteer more often in comparison with other respondents.
If the Belarusians had the opportunity to donate 1% of their taxes to public organisations, they would first of all support social, ecological and educational initiatives. People aged 15-24 and 25-34 are ready to finance youth and research organisations. The older are respondents, the less is the interest to support such organisations.
In the opinion of internet audience, the local problems of houses, yards and streets should be solved by competent authorities (district council, housing maintenance service) equally with local residents. Nevertheless, the percentage of respondents, who are ready to be engaged in the solution of local problems, is much less.
The detailed presentation of the research in Russian is available at the following link.
If you have any proposals on cooperation and using the results of the research, please, contact us via email oeec.ngo@gmail.com or mikhail@e-belarus.org.
The research is an initiative of Office for European Expertise and Communications and Baltic Internet Policy Initiative and was conducted at their own expense.
