It's a pretty difficult exercise to be grateful for what's happened over the last 20 years, but it's worth seeing how the non-governmental sector has managed to grow.

By George Gurescu

This year, we are celebrating two decades since ARC appeared. If the years of an NGO are measured the same as in cats or dogs, we are at a venerable age.  the work of a man in an association often means working in two to three positions simultaneously. 

We sat in the organization and looked at what had happened in these 20 years in the country. And despite the despair and bitterness that weighs on us all when we watch the news, things have changed. It's a rather difficult exercise to be grateful for what has happened in these 20 years, but it's worth seeing how the non-governmental sector has managed to grow. We have responsible and head-to-heart philanthropy, we have donors who believe in causes up to the white canvases, and financiers who no longer aim to collect photo albums with annual Christmas collections. 

We are many, but sometimes it seems to us that we are so alone. There are small organizations that manage to move mountains or save forests, we have initiative groups in communes that stop demolition and restore our drinking water. And yet it sometimes seems to us that our work is in vain when we look into the hallways of city halls, prefectures and other public institutions. 

It's a bitter feeling, and this thought that we're nobody's in the community, in the neighborhood, in the family, everywhere, it ends us. That's why we created the Chronicles of Philanthropy. Not to complain, but to show that we are many, but we need to know each other.

The second edition of the Chronicles started from this need for (re)knowledge. In October we talked to the organizations in the south of the country, trying to find out what we can do to grow the non-governmental sector not only in the capital and the big cities, but also in Mangalia and Turnu Măgurele. 

In October, we organized the Well-in-Construction Caravan, an event through which we help organizations in a particular region with expertise and discussions with professionals and we set up (or complain about) the entire sector.  Know that we have extraordinary people in the south of the country who are pulling their teeth at the places they are fighting for, who need help and who need to be supported. Some of them we present to you in the second edition of the Chronicles and we will take you through Arges and Constanța. 

Just as many valcans, buzoieni or suceveni leave Bucharest to build something else in their hometowns, so there are many people from Oltenia or Constanta who want to do something else in the place that was their home, and our role is to help them. Not to increase the number of organizations, but to strengthen those local communities. When a young person chooses to make a career in another city, because he has no other way, it means that another community has lost another chance. Leaving the place where you grew up is not easy, regardless of the age at which you do it, but through our work, we would like this decision to no longer depend on politics, economics or the lack of kindergartens. A very good explanation comes from sociologist Barbu Mateescu, present in this edition. 

We want to look at the good and the bad in other places, and Marija Mitrović, from the Trag Foundation in Serbia (an organization similar to ours), shows us how, despite an extraordinarily volatile situation in the Balkan region, there is a lot of hope. 

We have an edition that, we hope, will encourage and strengthen you. It's a damn hard road, but we're together. Remember!