Civil society

NGO´s are normally refered to as organisations that are neither a part of a government nor conventional for-profit businesses. They are highly diverse groups of organisations engaged in a wide range of activities, and take different forms in different parts of the world.

Volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity and is intended to promote goodness or improve human quality of life. In return, this activity can produce a feeling of self-esteem and respect. There is no financial gain involved for the individual.

The active citizens often bring a positive change, however, not necessarily. Civil society is a counter-weight to a state and engagement in it can produce a feeling of self-esteem and respect.

The public space is every social space that is generally open and accessible to people. It cannot therefore be just any place where people meet, for example a private house that is not open and accessible to everyone is not a public space but a cultural house is.

Open source-governance brings open sources and open content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of a policy. Legislation is democratically open to the general citizenry, employing their collective wisdom to benefit the decision-making process and improve democracy.

Lobbying (also lobby) is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by many different types of people and organised groups, including individuals in the private sector, corporations, fellow legislators, government officials or advocacy groups (interest groups). Lobbying is making sure that others interests are fully defended against corruption, or even simply making sure that minority interests are fairly defended against mere tyranny of the majority.

Without freedom of speech, civil society would not be fully realiseable

In every state there is a civil society, only where there are no people there is no civil society. However, we could still consider the polar stations there and in that case, there would be civil society also in Antarctica.