On Thursday, 26 October, the Pontis Foundation’s offices hosted the kick-off workshop of a project which, thanks to the support of the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), enables the experience of the Fund for a Transparent Slovakia to be spread to the neighbouring V4 countries.

In September, the Foundation’s representatives met with selected organizations in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland to find partners ready to analyse the situation in their respective countries and create a model similar to that of the Fund in the future.

The Visegrad partners, Budapest Institute from Hungary, the Foundation against Corruption from the Czech Republic, and Siec Obywatelska from Poland, met with the Foundation’s executives and donors from CIPE at a one-day workshop in Bratislava. Under the guidance of the Pontis Foundation, the partners introduced their organizations and had a chance to discuss the situation in their countries and the challenges awaiting them during their research. In the coming months, these organizations will be trying to map the situation in their respective countries and identify entrepreneurs, businesses, and other organizations which would potentially be interested in establishing a similar fund in their country.

The project manager Radana Deščíková talked about how the Fund works. Speaking on behalf of the partner companies, Miroslav Šarišský from Slovenské elektrárne shared the know-how of how the Fund was created, and Ctibor Košťál from SGI talked about the need of regular support that the Fund provides.

We are very happy that we could share the experience with the support of transparency within the V4 region.