Carrying on with our mission to work in rural communities in times of crisis

April 2020

We are all going through difficult times right now, and a lot is being written about it, from all perspectives and points of view. In the following lines, we will share our experience as an association working with vulnerable young people in the village, in Sibiu County, Transylvania.

Our work has the biggest impact when we create bonds of trust, communication and a sense of security and belonging for our children. If face-to-face work and direct, authentic communication are essential for us and the kids, how can we function in times of physical distancing? We have to admit that we don’t have a perfect answer, but we are striving to adapt and continue our mission.

So, what were we doing when crisis struck?

At the beggining of March, we had just sent an order of spring lucky charms Handmade in Mălâncrav in Belgium and another one in Italy. Unfortunately, in Italy, the jewlry could no longer be exhibited by our partner, because he had to cancel the touristical promotion event of Transylvania, of which we were also part.

After a semester of digital literary club with the children from Mălâncrav, in March we had also initiated the digital reading club in Laslea.

 Meanwhile, with the help of the Workshops without Borders Association, we had managed to receive a donation of 30 computers for the informatics school labs in Laslea and Mălâncrav. We could have thus extended the digital mathematics program from Mălâncrav to Laslea.

We had been preparing, after three months of frustrations due to legislative limitations and after long conversations with the authorities, to start the counseling and internship program for 5 young people who no longer went to school and did not work legally .

And we had learned with joy that we received, as partners of the Iele Sânziene Association, a grant for menstrual educational workshops for girls . The workshops were supposed to begin in April.

How did we adapt?

The physical presence of us, of the volunteers, of the counselors who work with our youngsters in different projects is vital. At this point, this presence is no longer possible.

Three ongoing projects and two that were about to start suddenly stalled. We can no longer reach the same number of children, but we used an advantage of our own to reinvent ourselves.

Our projects were, from the very beggining, thought and written remotely, using online means, because some of the members of the association are not in Romania. All projects have been designed in such a way that the implementation is done as efficiently as possible, through collaborators and volunteers.

For the logistical organization, we worked a lot by e-mail, phones and video conferencing. We have facebook groups with the children and thousands of hours spent online to solve the problems that inevitably always arise.

Now that our physical, real presence is impossible, we still use Facebook and other online collaboration tools.

We have daily virtual tours around Romania and around the world, for middle school or high school children, from our villages and beyond. We make them on Skype, through shared screen.

All our digital tools at the association are used by the maths teacher from Mălâncrav, a founding member of the association,and this allows him to hold his online classes.

We are offering project writing consultancy for anyone who’s busy creating projects for their community, and who needs help to lay out their ideas on paper. We started with a project addressed to Transylvanian entrepreneurs affected by the crisis, as a solution to the emergency call for projects of the Central European Initiative.

Our activity is reduced because all our projects involve human interaction. However, we did find ways to move forward, inventing activities we had never thought of and taking advantage of the fact that our association was built through remote volunteering, with digital means.

Our most important piece of advice is not to let the fear of the unpredicatble dominate you. Take our exemple and think about how you would have managed your own organisation if you were to leave and do things remotely. At the end of this period, you will be able to come back to your communities with much more experience!