Article by Natanael Iriciuc, volunteer within GIL Sector 1.

We talked in the first article about the importance of volunteering, and today we bring up the role that local public administrations play in the promotion and development of extracurricular activities for young people in local communities.

In recent years, the results of local initiatives have shown how important it is to support voluntary movements because they contribute directly to the development of local communities by creating a generation of young people involved at the local level. Local administrations have become a main pawn in supporting volunteering at the local level because their contribution is essential in creating the most diverse extracurricular activities for young people.

In the midst of the pandemic, some of the employees of the Alba Iulia City Hall, eager to get involved, challenged their colleagues to join a civic initiative through which they helped the lonely old people in the city. Through this project, the elderly in Alba Iulia were protected from the virus that endangered their health, and the activities that required leaving the home were taken over by the project’s volunteers (shopping, bill payments).

Since the workload was very high, the coordinators of this project initiated a recruitment session of volunteers with the help of which they completed this project. Thus, any young person from Alba Iulia eager to get involved was able to bring a smile through the actions taken.

It is a very simple example of an initiative that led to the creation of a community of volunteers in Alba Iulia, a community that remained active and present in the community. Through a very simple and spontaneous initiative, volunteering in this city took on a new meaning for young people and the community.

These initiatives, continued by funding volunteer projects, by creating mechanisms where every young person can come up with an initiative that solves a community problem, manage to increase young people’s interest in civic involvement and give life to local communities.

“We want to show a more humane side of the public administration staff. Beyond being officials, there are people there. I work in a department composed of young people, we want to respond to the community’s needs much more promptly and we are more flexible and dynamic. We all also worked on weekends and evenings – maybe it’s the prerogative of youth. But we do this on our own time, because we really want to do something for the community, and so it shows that we are present in the community, not just behind a counter. The moment you taste the taste of doing good, you get infected, and you want to keep tasting this attitude… I coordinated for 3 years a program of good deeds – Giving Tuesday – always outside working hours, as well done even now, because I believe very much in community coalition to give something back to others. I don’t know how much time we invested in it – we always wanted to be prompt, we went beyond the institutional time barriers of 8 to 4 and if we had registrations or questions at 8 in the evening, we answered them instantly. People were surprised that I responded so quickly.” – Sebastian Băeșan – volunteer coordinator

The project is implemented by The Romanian Academic Society in partnership with the Act For Tomorrow Association and Vellenes Fellesorganisasjon and benefits from a 249.989 euros grant from Active Citizens Fund Romania, funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants Grants 2014 -2021. The content of this website does not necessarily reflect the official position of the EEA and Norway Grants 2014-2021; for more information, visit www.eeagrants.org. More details about Active Citizens Fund Romania are available at www.activecitizensfund.ro.