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More ways to do Galati well

by Bogdan Dinca

Galati has gone through two major crises in the last two years – the pandemic and the flight of Ukrainian citizens from war. The Galati Community Foundation has managed to mobilize local resources not only to cope with these crises, but also to continue projects such as the Științescu Fund and the Half Marathon, which create opportunities for education and civic initiatives.

REFUGEES SAFE

Ten children look closely at the pictures that Miroslava shows on the laptop. They are "vyshyvanka", traditional Ukrainian shirts, usually worn on holidays and special days. Anya explains the details of each suit and then shares clips with the children that they are going to color.

"All children have such costumes at home. Sometimes they talk about them with us and tell us that they lack them. That's why we wanted to do some activities with them that would remind them. They know the colors, they know the ornaments and they like to color them," says Anya. Miroslava adds: "at first, the children were talking about explosions, alarms and all these sounds. But now they are in comfortable, safe conditions, surrounded by love and kindness. It's become easier for them, they're starting to forget."

Anya and Miroslava are two of the three Ukrainian teachers employed at the "Clever Kids" kindergarten in Galați, where children who arrived here every day because of the war come every day.

In the first days of the war, Carmen Talabă, the kindergarten director, visited several refugee centers in the city and realized that she could help with what the association knows how to do best – to provide access to education to children, in this case to the Ukrainians. He launched into social media the idea of creating a class for them and the desire to find cadres from Ukraine. At first the teachers came voluntarily.

Anya is 37 years old, comes from Odessa and is a mother of two daughters. In Ukraine she has worked for the last four years as an educator in a private kindergarten and wants to use her experience to help families who left the country and stayed in Galati: "I'm staying in a shelter. At first, I did not know what to do, I had a lot of free time. Carmen told me she wanted to make a class for Ukrainian children and I wanted to help."

Fleeing the war was an experience that left traces: "I am also an artist and I usually travel a lot outside my country. But usually, when I leave, I know I'm going to come back. It's the first time in my life that I've left Ukraine and when I don't know when I'm going to come back. At first I thought it would take two to three days and it would all end. But it's not over. I left in a hurry, some friends called me and asked me if I wanted to come, we had ten minutes to decide.

No one knew where we were going, we just wanted to leave. It was hard at first. My friends left for Germany and I was left here alone. I don't want to go anywhere, I want to stay close to my country."

Kindergarten not only helps children, but also them, the adults who work there, says Anya. On her, activities with children help her give meaning to the happenings of the last few months." We play with children, sometimes they tell us funny stories. Children have this very special quality, they are not sad, they enjoy every moment. Now they don't talk about war anymore, they play, they laugh and we do the same with them."

In the first days of operation of the class for Ukrainian children, they were offered breakfast and some fruits: "We did not have funds for everything we need," says Carmen Talabă. "I applied to the Emergency Fund "Safe Refugees" of the Galati Community Foundationand now the children have all the meals included here and they do a lot of activities."

At the beginning of March, when Anya and the other Ukrainians were fleeing the war, the Galați Community Foundation team organized, together with other NGOs in the city and with the Galați Prefecture, a first meeting in which the collaboration between the authorities and the civil society to cope with the crisis was discussed. Through The Galați Customs, three to four thousand people entered every day, part of whom was looking for accommodation and needed help. The volunteers, present in customs from the first days of the war, were tired, NGOs tried to invest time and resources often beyond their capabilities, and the authorities were caught between the need for procedures and the bureaucratic process of their implementation.

Many needs arose: from the distribution of food to accommodation or transport, from the lack of translators to the necessary psychological support not only for refugees, but also for volunteers, from the lack of customs signage to the coordination of communication between volunteers and authorities. The Foundation assumed the role of mediator and organizer of these needs, by putting in contact the people, associations and institutions that offered their help, but also by granting non-reimbursable grants. Georgiana Mihailovici, vice-president of the Foundation, spoke at the timeabout the role that FCG fulfills in such a crisis:

"The role of the Community Foundation in Galați is to provide support to organizations through aid also received from Galați. Basically, individuals and legal entities contribute with funds and these donations arrive in the form of grants to the organizations at the grassroots. Now there are eight main NGOs, each responsible for a particular area. Some take care of food, others transport, accommodation, volunteers, legal assistance, medical care."

It was the first time they had sat at the same table with the authorities and coordinated their efforts. 

The war in Ukraine was not the first crisis for which the Galati Community Foundation sought solutions at the local level. During the pandemic, the emergency fund "Galați in safety" was launched, through which ten hospitals in the Galati area were supported.  

"In the pandemic, everyone worked as they could and chaos was created," said Georgiana Mikhailovich. "For us now it really is a very important moment that we manage to coordinate, even if we are far from perfection. We understand perfectly and those in institutions, they need procedures, they need ordinances, but until that time comes, we need food now. This is where the NGOs came in and did what they could, because in our country this legal part is much more relaxed than what happens within the institutions."

THE FANTASTICS DOWN AND THE HALF MARATHON

Mioara Munteanu is 45 years old and is an economist by profession. In 2016 she became the mother of Andrei, a child born with Down syndrome.

"Andrei is a wanted and assumed child. I knew he had Down Syndrome – I read a lot, but the reality is completely different than what is written. From the first day he was born, all I did was take care of him, because I knew he needed specialized help."

After Andrei was born, she searched in Galați for an association to help her give her child everything she needed, but she did not find it. This is how he decided to set up the association "Fantasticii Down", in which he brought a group of parents determined to improve the lives of children with this syndrome.

"I didn't think inclusion in society was going to be a problem. From a young age it seemed to me a normal child, like everyone else, but unfortunately we are criticized and judged by their physical appearance. And yes, there are still kids who look when we go to the park or to events. It probably needs to be worked in the family and in education, in order to understand what a child with a disability means. Let's not be surprised anymore, rather we ask a question. I have the patience to answer, when someone asks me about it. A lot of times people say 'but it's going to pass, right?' – so people don't know what this syndrome means. Or 'whose fault is it? Did you have anyone in the family?' This happens because of a genetic accident."

The need for communication, to turn prejudices into normality, made Mioara get involved in public events, such asthe Galați Half Marathon, organized by the Community Foundation: "that is  why we participate in such events, to see our world, to get to know each other, to include ourselves. Because these kids are a little bit different, too, but they're still kids. And they know how to play, to love. And they learn, harder , but they learn."

In 2022, the association founded by Mioara participated for the fourth time in the half marathon, along with eight other causes in Galați, such as the support of children with autism or those with a parent in the penitentiary or environmental causes. The mechanism of the event is simple: you can support one of the causes registered either by running on the day of the races, or by direct donations to the cause on the site.

 "At the Galați Community Foundation and at the Half Marathon we found a state of fair play. We promote our cause, we look for people to help us, they provide us with all the arsenal of communication and promotion. It seems to me an honest and clean place where people can see us. We feel like everyone else, not marginalized," says Mioara.

The association managed this year to raise almost three times as much money as it had planned. With the funds raised, Mioara aims to provide access to specialized therapies for children with Down syndrome: speech therapy, physical therapy, behavioral therapies. "A piece of the funds goes to something else. As others are kind to us, we also want to show that we can help, even if we are disabled, we can help our neighbor." Last year, the association helped with the money raised a children's ward at the hospital, with several medical devices. This year he set out to help a nursing home that has 15 seniors.

Simona Mușală, project manager of the Half Marathon, tells about what it means to organize such an event: "The work for the Half Marathon started in January, when we dealt with the formalities with the public institutions: we took the agreement in principle from the City Hall, the Gendarmerie, the Traffic Police. All permits stretch somewhere over three months. Then I chose the suppliers for T-shirts, medals, graphics. We try from year to year to be as innovative as possible and to take into account the feedback we receive over time."

Almost 150 volunteers were involved, who helped both on the day of the races and in the previous period, sharing, for example, participation kits.

ȘTIINȚESCU

In a classroom of the "Mircea Eliade" High School in Galați, twenty students of all ages listen to the physics teacher, Niculina Coman, who points to a mock-up and explains the project they have been dealing with in the last year: "Here we have a partially robotic farm, which a young farmer who does not have much funds to use. We symbolically put three cows on the conveyor belt on which the food comes. We have straw bales, fodder plants. From Lego pieces, the kids made a summer stable with vents, a fountain."

Iulian, one of the eleventh graders, the "clear head", as the teacher calls him, enthusiastically completes: "we also have solar panels, which supply electricity to a barn!" 

He talks passionately about the work he has done in the project. He says that he has always wanted to build a robotic arm, but he lacked both the necessary technology (in this case a 3D printer) and the funds for electronic parts. The "Smart Farm" project, with which professor Niculina Coman applied to the Științescu Fund, ensured her access to both.

About fifty children worked on the project, who also received the help of students from the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers. They came up with the idea of using Arduino modules instead of Lego parts and mechanisms. The children learned programming and how to combine different technologies.

One of the objectives of the program was to provide collaborative opportunities for students from as many classes as possible. For example, children from human profiles were involved, who took care of the design part, and an important part of the project was that of mentoring. Lucia and Bogdan, from the tenth grade, were also mentors for the children in the first grade. At the first meeting with the children, the two had great emotions, their voices trembled and they did not know what to expect: "The experience of mentoring was more difficult than that of a student. We didn't know if the kids understood what we were explaining to them, although we had a pretty well organized text. We had to think about how to explain them understandably, how to make them understand. I basically had a teacher experience. You have to be patient."

Iulian explains what he managed to build with his colleagues:

 "We have two automated systems. The irrigation one consists of a sensor that permanently monitors the moisture level of the soil. We have a converter from analog to digital, and all Arduino modules have one bluetooth module at a time, so all the information is sent to our phones. We have a pump that we can operate using a relay or program it to activate automatically at a certain level of soil moisture."

Also through Arduino, Iulian also made his biggest project: a robotic arm that replaces the human workforce. "It's very accurate, effective, it doesn't ask for food, it's asking for money. Now it's connected to the laptop, but it can also be operated from the phone." In the future, he would like the farmer to act everything on the Internet.

Iulian most likes to combine the hardware part with the software part. "You also need knowledge of electronics, of mechanics. At first I had no idea what a relay does, but now I know it very well. In the future I would like to be a software engineer in the automotive industry. This robotics group opened my eyes, and the funding helped me the most." 

Niculina Coman says about the group of students she works with that they are all dreamers. In her 32 years of education, she has constantly tried to get involved in giving children as many opportunities as possible to work practically with the notions of physics she teaches: "The mind has to keep it awake all the time. And you can't keep her awake by watching TV.

You know how school was done before, you had to deal with what you had in the lab. And I wanted these kids to have more. I like at the grassroots, to understand the children what they are doing, with a practical, palpable example. You learn the theory today, tomorrow you don't know it anymore."

She went with the kids to all sorts of competitions. He had students in the class who qualified for international Olympiads, but the lack of funds prevented them from making the trips. In time, she learned to seek funding, as is the one from the Galați Community Foundation: "I learned about the Științescu Fund from a colleague in 2019. I had the idea: the lack of parking. I talked to one of the students, with Stefan, I asked him if we could make a mock-up of the bunk parking lot. He told me yes and I applied. I learned on the fly, I made phone calls, I asked other beneficiaries of the program how they did it." At the next edition of the fund has already written the application for an environmental program, which is based on photovoltaic panels.

In the two editions so far, the Științescu Fund has financed in Galați 20 projects, in which almost 3,000 children were involved. Across the country, over 450 educational projects in science, technology, engineering and mathematics have been supported in 13 regions of the country.

GALAȚI COMMUNITY FOUNDATION

 In addition to the Științescu Fund, the Half Marathon and the emergency funds opened for the crises of the last three years, the Galați Community Foundation is also carrying out other programs for the community in the city. Liliana Cristea, executive director of the foundation since 2019, explains: "Our role is as a financier, facilitator, curator of resources and opportunities. We support community transformation by engaging human potential and local resources. Our vision is a community that is aware of its potential and that explores, creates new solutions and acts collaboratively. Our goal is to make Galati at home, a 'home' from which we do not want to leave."

The Foundation appeared in 2014 as an initiative group, and in October 2015 it became a well-documented foundation, founded by people from the city, with the support of the Romanian American Foundation and the Association for Community Relations.

Today, the foundation is part of the Federation of Community Foundations in Romania, along with organizations from other 14 cities. The Federation helps local foundations to develop and professionalize themselves, by developing funding mechanisms and by supporting in various forms the national network of foundations. Some of the programs, such as the Științescu Fund, can be found in several cities, and the community foundations that are part of the network recommend each other to national funders and exchange information about their projects.

Alina Kasprovschi, director of the Bucharest Community Foundation, tells about the conditions that must exist in order to create a community foundation recognized by the federation: "One – to have a community as cohesive as possible, to have some initiatives, some people who do well and two – to have a strong enough local economy, because the community foundations are generally financially supported by local money."

This is also the case in Galati, where the Community Foundation is constantly trying to increase the involvement of local resources. If you want to support the galatian community, you can do it as a natural or legal person here.



The article was produced within the Journalism Scholarships on Philanthropy, a program developed by the Association for Community Relations and supported by Lidl Romania.

The article was published on the Documentaria.ro and can be found here (http://www.documentaria.ro/content/archives/48300 )



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