| Activities: |
The community based organizations participating in the program benefited from:
- 12
days of training (split along 4 modules) on participatory community
needs assessment, participatory project planning, development and
management, team work and organizational management, developing
relations with other community actors, communication, community
fundraising and resource mobilization.
- 4
on-site consultancy visits in the communities involved, to support the
community based organizations to achieve successfully all the
activities they had planned, to develop their ideas, to plan and
implement community projects, to draw resources for developing other
community activities and to further develop their relationships with
community actors, particularly with the local public authorities.
- Financing
(up to 3600 RON/project) through which they could put their ideas into
practice, running a community project over a period of 4 months.
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| Results: |
• 15 CBOs selected to participate in the program
• 4 training modules on participatory community needs analysis,
participatory project planning, development and management, team work
and organizational management, developing relations with other
community actors, communication, community fundraising and resource
mobilization
• 20 individuals with increased knowledge and skills in community
development, regarding the above mentioned themes
• 10 CBOs with increased capacity to represent the interests and
stimulate disadvantaged and marginalized groups to engage in community
life and take initiative to solve local problems
• 1 community group gained legal status as a community association
• 1 initiative group started the process of obtaining the legal status as an association
• 11 community projects were implemented successfully over a period
of 4 months, responding to the participating communities’ needs and
problems, identified in a participatory manner, through the involvement
of community members:
- Digging a 40 m deep well to ensure access to clean, drinkable
water for a community of 1000 people, Roma and Romanian
- Summer school for children who had no other vacation opportunity because of the poor condition of their families
- Creating a “special friends’ club” for physically and/or mentally
disabled children and young people, in an adequate space for their
special needs
- Refurbishing an old existing playground in a poor neighborhood
- Summer school for Roma and Romanian children in need of special
additional preparation for the next school phase (passing from primary
school to gymnasium), helping them to accumulate knowledge and
abilities they would use in school in the future
- Creating 2 playgrounds in 2 communities where children did not
have access to such facilities on a range of 1-4 km
- Organizing health education courses for 45 pregnant mothers or
with children to 1 year of age in a Roma community
- Ensuring specialized assistance and educational services for disabled children and their parents
- Summer school for children whose parents were working abroad,
providing educational and personal development activities
(interpersonal communication, team work etc.)
- Facilitating
the integration of Roma children and youth among the Romanian
community, by initiating an interethnic dances club where they would
learn both Roma and Romanian traditional dances; also introducing an
optional seminar on Roma history and traditions in the local school
curricula
• the CBOs succeeded to raise more resources for the
development of their community; the communities benefited through
various initiatives, either through mobilizing local resources or
drawing external resources, and these resources contributed to the
improvement of life conditions and welfare of various groups in the
targeted communities
• 7 CBOs carried on with fundraising activities for financing new activities to the benefit of their community:
- selling specific products for the spring celebration on March 1st,
in connection with an itinerary organized on this occasion by a local
museum
- selling hand-made cards, through their own social network, on the
occasion of Women’s celebration day on March 8th
- Christmas celebrations, offering presents and packages for children
- organizing prize contests on the occasion of Children’s day on June 1st
- organizing a ceremony with the Roma dance team
- organizing
a sales exposition on the occasion of the disabled persons’ day –
selling objects hand made by disabled children, together with their
parents and teachers
- humanitarian show involving children
performing dances and a theatre play within a public theatre; the show
was so successful, that it was replicated on several other occasions
• the participants in the program:
- have become more self confident and empowered; they have built
trust in their own abilities to create a better life for themselves and
their community, which is one of the first steps in producing change;
many have reported this change in their perception on themselves, on
what and how much they can achieve; this self trust has empowered them
to take community action and initiative into their own lives as well
(disabled people getting higher education or a job)
- have become more open to learning and sharing; they have changed
their perception of what learning is and how they could use their own
experiences to contribute to learning; they have also experienced
learning from one another and not only from the experts and they
understood that local knowledge underlies in each community
- have
learned how to take up new development opportunities; being aware of
the community work language and practice, many are now active in
organizations using various opportunities from inside and outside the
communities; thus, they continue running projects to improve the living
in their communities
- have become more aware of their increased
status - through all the actions within the program and continuing this
type of activities, they have consolidated their leadership position
within the community, being approached by community members or even
community institutions for representation and leadership on various
initiatives
- have been able to transfer the skills, tools and lessons learned
throughout the program to other levels of their own lives (i.e. their
work as teacher or even mayor), which has helped them improve their
performance
- now hold the necessary skills to initiate other projects for their
community’s development, in a participatory manner, using available
resources, taking initiative and collaborating with other community
members and local institutions in order to address a larger range of
community needs
- have
become more aware of the role of civil society in Romania; they have
understood that their initiatives are useful for the community, as they
understood the mechanisms and channels through which they could play an
important role in their communities’ life, thus actively engaging in
such initiatives
• other development actors in the 11
communities (local governments, public institutions such as the school,
the local medical dispensary or the church, as well as business sector
representatives) became aware of the potential of the CBOs and of the
projects planned and implemented in a participatory manner
• after the ending of the program, some CBO’s made partnerships or
collaboration protocols among each other in order to develop together
new activities meant to develop their own communities
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