The managing board of ERSTE Foundation: Mario Catasta (CEO), Eva Höltl, Franz Portisch, Boris Marte (dep. CEO) Photo: Peter M. Mayr
A Year Like No Other
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van Krastev sees a paradox in the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the world (“Is it tomorrow yet?”): although in 2020 we were supposed to keep as much distance from each other as possible and borders were closed temporarily, we all felt more than ever, perhaps for the first time in history, that we are inhabitants of one world, fatefully connected, united in the fight against the virus. We are facing the same crisis all over the world, even though it does not have the same consequences for everyone. Therefore, many reviews of 2020 will probably be much alike. This is our take on the situation as we look back on a year like no other. At the beginning of the year, we at ERSTE Foundation felt encouraged by the inspiring ideas for a sustainable future that the guests of our 200th anniversary lecture series had presented us the year before. We were eager to share these thoughts with our colleagues at the European Foundation Centre conference that we were to host in Vienna in May. The conference, entitled “Foundations and The New Normal”, obviously had to be postponed until 2021. Meanwhile a new normal became reality when the coronavirus pandemic broke out in March, massively impacting ERSTE Foundation’s work in multiple ways. Our staff worked from home for most of the year, something we were well prepared for in technical and organisational terms. We also did everything possible to ensure
safe and continued cooperation with the numerous initiatives and partner organisations, while we – like many others – had to prepare for times of financial uncertainty. From the first moment of the crisis, our aim was to lay the foundation for a new beginning.
From the first moment of the crisis, our aim was to lay the foundation for a new beginning.
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Many projects were unable to implement their programmes as planned. For example, cultural venues in most European countries were closed for months to reduce infection levels. Artists, project managers, journalists, scholarship holders, lecturers and others involved in programmes were unable to travel at all or could do so only to a very limited extent. Conferences, exhibitions, seminars, and similar events were cancelled or moved online. Even Zweite Sparkasse now shifted to providing customer services online. At the same time, the NGO sector struggled with similar economic problems as the for-profit sector, but was offered much less government compensation aid, or none at all, in many countries. Moreover, social inequality was exacerbated: sudden joblessness or unemployment, precarious living conditions, parents and children struggling with homeschooling, crises in the care sector and severe or even fatal courses of the disease abruptly aggravated the problems of (potential) clients of many NGOs.
