Géza Nagy

Geza Nagy is challenging people with disabilities to redefine their role in society and complimenting the disabled community's push for change with an external pull by working with business, government, and the media to transform the environment in which disabled people live, work, and function.

From the arts to government and the business sector, a new generation of disabled professionals is moving into the work force. These individuals are often perceived as a burden when in fact disabled individuals are valuable producers, adding value to society. By working through the media, schools, government, and business, Geza is challenging society's treatment of, and reaction to, people with disabilities. By empowering people with disabilities to stretch their perceived limitations, Geza is expanding the opportunities of these individuals, improving their self-esteem, and changing the way they are perceived by Hungarian society. Geza also wants to change the way government, business, and the media treat this new generation of disabled professionals. He is challenging the media to be accessible and hire disabled professionals, and working with schools to create more supportive and accessible environments. He is also encouraging businesses to employ–and design products and services for–people with disabilities, and he advocates for institutions and organizations to become more professional in their operations and portrayal of the communities with whom they work.

Disabled Hungarians face difficulties in many different settings.

Businesses do not distinguish between people with disabilities and others. All are consumers of goods and services. The range of goods and services that people with disabilities could both design and purchase are not addressed. However, when hiring, businesses perceive a difference in capability between the physically disabled and the general public, even when the disability would have no impact on job performance, and are therefore reluctant to hire people with disabilities.

The media distort the public perception of people with disabilities. The media portray people with disabilities as service takers or consumers, people that should be cared for. It often shares conflicting information regarding the state of the disabled, as government and the NGO community frequently have different perspectives on this matter. It is uncommon for the media to address social issues, limiting how much exposure viewers have to issues related to the disabled. The few programs that do exist do not clearly and effectively communicate the challenges and successes of the disabled community. There are no provisions enabling greater access to the media for the disabled, such as accessible news rooms or subtitles for the deaf community. There is one TV program 20 minutes per month for the disabled; approximately 3,000 people watch this program although there are 600,000 disabled people in Hungary.

Schools do not adequately address the needs of students. Institutions of higher learning do not recognize the importance of providing services like counseling, administrative services, career planning, and tutoring. Students with disabilities face an even larger disadvantage, as the schools do not provide any special tools or resources to enable them to participate equally. Student governments, and student interest organizations that exist in all schools, do not effectively advocate for the students they represent. Institutions continue to work in an old-fashioned, authority-driven way, often impeding any new initiatives. School administrations become an obstacle to change, as they are restricted in their actions by their limited financial resources.

To communicate the idea of the disabled as "producers," Geza believes that it will take a systematic effort on the part of the government, business community, media, and disabled community itself. This requires communication as well as highly visible and experimental demonstrations of what it means to be a disabled "producer" rather than merely a drain on the state.

Geza is working closely with the National Radio and Television Council to ensure more visibility for the disabled in the media, to conduct research, influence TV producers to include actors with disabilities in their programs, and incorporate the issue of disabilities in the ethics code of National Television. To move this work forward, Geza is cooperating with Ashoka Fellow Tamas Liling. Geza has developed a partnership with a commercial channel that will give exposure to social issues such as disabilities. Geza is using 2003, the European Year of Disability, as a tool for influencing the media and integrating disability work with other existing events, festivals, and programs. He has formed a group of the communication directors of eight government ministries to create a unified communication strategy. This group is convincing the National Television to grant Geza one show a week, which Geza will use to feature films and roundtable discussions regarding issues of importance to the disabled. Geza and the government will also organize conferences and workshops challenging the term "disabled" in 2003. Ultimately, Geza wants the media to become active in enabling people with disabilities to freely access and participate in the media. In order to change the way people see the disabled, Geza wants to change the language that institutions use. He has entered into a series of agreements with the government and ministries to have a media center screen government press releases and major news to ensure that the disabled are referred to in a consistent and thoughtful way. The media center distributes news, gives information to interested people, builds partnerships with different media, and harmonizes the many sources of news.

Geza is creating opportunities for disabled people to participate as producers. He is establishing extensive programs within the framework of the European Year for Disability. He envisions three projects: setting up a traveling amusement park, called the Ability Park; introducing the Moving Disabled Seller Program; and constructing a Disability Truck for parades and carnivals. The amusement park is organized in cooperation with 27 other NGOs that will profit from the enterprise. The media are also taking part. Funding for the amusement park is coming in part from businesses that are investing in the park as a venture capital project, an idea new to Hungary. He is offering the rights to the park's trademark in exchange for these funds. The amusement park is designed for young people, children, and families and includes interesting and creative programs where people can experience what it means to be blind or deaf. Approximately 40 disabled people will work in the park and products made by the disabled will be sold there. The amusement park will travel throughout Hungary and will be presented at large events around Europe and the United States. The Ministry of Informatics is publishing a CD-ROM flash animation game creating a virtual Ability Park based upon the physical park. Geza believes that this park will be self-sustaining, raising revenue from entrance fees.

Through the Moving Disabled Seller program, disabled people in wheelchairs will sell products, and their chairs will be used for advertisement space. Geza believes that when a person in a wheelchair approaches somebody, people typically fear that the person in the wheelchair will ask for money. By having the person in the wheelchair offer something, this could change the nature of these interactions and perceptions of the disabled more generally. This project will create new employment opportunities. Following the example of the Berlin Love Parade, Hungary has started a modest Budapest Parade. In preparation for the Budapest Parade, a disability truck will be built and decorated. The truck will be at the Budapest Festival but will also travel to towns and events like the Flower Carnival outside the capital. Geza has started to introduce new services into the higher education system and affect the way institutions and student advocacy organizations work. He established the Student Service Association, which provides cost-effective services to students. With the help of the Ministry of Education, he was able to create the Service Center for Helping the Disabled, which is designed to help disabled students in all aspects of their lives. He is now convincing institutions of higher education to set up student service centers, or at least designate a coordinator to help students with disabilities. He is setting up a Central Warehouse of Professional Tools for educational tutors, young volunteers who study with the disabled. Geza is negotiating with the student government to support those young people who help their disabled colleagues. He has involved construction companies in a competitive bidding process for future work to make schools accessible, work that could become obligatory under a pending law. Geza also strives to build from the National Meeting of University and College Students, a large annual festival, by starting a National Meeting of Disabled University and College Students. He conducted the first meeting at a rural university in Pecs and plans on hosting the next in Miskolc. This event, involving young people from Hungary and abroad, engages students in different cultural programs and concerts, all designed to empower people with disabilities.

Geza is also eager to transform the Civil Workshop, the coalition of state representatives, key leading NGOs, and small citizen organizations in Hungary. He is also leading a group that is focusing on news and job placement at government ministries, and is setting up a service center to help the Civil Workshop assist small NGOs working on disability issues in rural areas to become more professional. The service center is providing training for organizations, assisting them with application writing, and offering mentoring in resource mobilization, administrative and accounting matters, and government reporting. Geza is a member of the National Disability Council, a group which unites 107 citizen sector organizations. The National Disability Council was created by the Ministry of Social Affairs in cooperation with NGOs in order to become EU compliant. Geza is working to transform this forum into an umbrella organization that would work with the Media Center for Disability. After it becomes a more effective organization, the Civil Workshop will be able to implement innovations tackling the different problems faced by the disabled.

Geza's program shows that disabled people are not merely wards of the state; they are professionals, equal to any other employees. He highlights that the disabled are not just pleading for jobs, but are able to create initiatives for businesses to invest in and support. Geza is creating a brand for disabled professionals. To address the need for accessibility of buildings, Geza has built partnerships with construction companies. He pulled together the Ministry of Youth and Sport and businessmen interested in tourism, starting an accessible sports center that is a model health center and venue for wine tourism, bicycling, and sports and leisure activities connected to thermal baths. He has convinced the ministry to fund seven additional sport centers based on the success of his model. These centers will cooperate with businesses, employ Roma women over 40, and hire and train people to repair sports equipment. Geza is trying to convince the EU to incorporate this idea in its development strategies and wants to host disabled tourists from across Europe. Neither the EU nor others have yet discovered this target group as a consumer force of tourism. Geza is advocating for the government to establish competitions and awards for the business sector's accommodation of disabled individuals–Best Reconstruction, Best Braille menu, and so on) creating an additional incentive to serve the disabled.

Geza was born in 1970. Raised as an atheist, Geza was always taught that he was responsible for himself and accountable for his own actions. In high school, he was always trying to fight against old structures. He organized film clubs, weekend programs, and set up different theater pieces. Between 1984 and 1989, these activities were perceived as opposing the then-ruling communist system.

Although he was being pushed into becoming a literature or history teacher, he really wanted to become a theater director. Having failed the literature and history departments' entrance exams because of his radical views of history, he went on to work for different theaters including Hungary's first private theater. In 1991 he went on to study cultural management and later aesthetics at university, all the time directing theater pieces at his old high school. At university, he was one of the initiators of the University Stage and founder of the Foundation for University Culture. The foundation mobilized financial resources, ran the stage, set up several pieces, and became well known in Hungary, eventually closing at the government's order because of its success.

When Geza went to college, he saw that there were no useful student services, no photocopy facilities, no regularly published educational catalogues, and no counseling for students. And he also discovered that the situation was far worse for students with disabilities. Geza set up an Office of Student Services. It met the needs of nondisabled students first, but later introduced services for the disabled as well.

In 1996 Geza became active in the development of small underground cafes. He started to establish the Union of Cafés in Budapest in order to ensure the quality and protection of small cafes in an environment of powerful business interests. Simultaneously, he started an innovation center (in cooperation with the Civil Workshop), a central information database and service center that brought together different resources–the media, business, the state, and the community–to cooperatively implement new projects involving the disabled.

Through his first experience with the disabled through the Innovation Center, Geza saw how programs for the disabled could be vastly improved and used to bridge the disabled and society.