When it begins to "see the trace at the mop"
Text by Silvia Boeriu, Resource Center for Public Participation
Civic engagement is no longer as abstract as it was 10 years ago, when colleagues at the Resource Center for Public Participation (CeRe) were doing community organizing in neighborhoods. They said they were confused with sellers of forks, bedding or whatever else was in vogue at teleshopping. Years passed, colleagues old and new went arm in arm with hundreds of people and dozens of groups in their effort to convince the administration to solve problems in the communities. Now, in Bucharest alone, there are over 20 initiative groups that exchange experience and support each other.
"Come on you can see the trace at the mop!" said Oana Preda, executive director of CeRe and one of the people who founded the organization 14 years ago. Then it was a beautiful dream that people would organize themselves "by themselves" to make the mayors and councilors of Bucharest more attentive to the city's problems, and the concept of community organization looked more like a postcard received from America, on which it wrote "Just do it".
That's how the CeRe story began: we started doing it. I've seen the trace from the mop every time the groups and people I've learned what it's like with petition, with community mobilization, with protest or with the fierce attempts to get to council meetings have begun to trust that every little or more civic success inspires others, that these successes matter, and that. above all, it changes perceptions. It's just that the mop has to be watered all the time to keep seeing the traces, plus there are others who step more pressed and leave different traces on your mop trail. Traces that make you wonder if your effort matters and if we will ever be enough and vocal enough to cleanse the public administration of its "you can't, Mr. Citizen, we know better!"
A galactic Mr. Proper would probably tell us that even if he did the civic job along with ten trucks of mops, there would still be a lot of work to be done around the corners. No one is looking for perfection. That's what we, CeRe, are up to show what advocacy work is all about, who does it, and especially why mop footprints are important. The story now is about how civic engagement in big cities differs from that in smaller localities or villages.
Sometimes the trace of the mop is not seen from the plane, but it means access to decent housing or access to health services and public transport for communities.
For a group of women from a village in Giurgiu County, preoccupied with solving problems such as the lack of arrangement of a park and a playground in their village, the interactions with the mayor had unpleasant consequences. A representative of the city hall drew the attention of the civic ladies' partners that he was coming to check their building permits of the houses in the village, if their wives do not "let it softer". That's kind of the way it is with civism in small communities.
Everyone knows everyone and if you have "disturbing" initiatives for the people in the city hall, you find yourself not talking to you half the village anymore. At the same time, experience has shown us that in rural areas the communication of civic groups with local authorities tends to take place faster than in cities, and trust relations between group members and the community are easier to build. As in the city, however, in order to influence public decisions, the large numbers of citizens who support civic initiatives and the level at which the community feels represented by the topics chosen by the groups are equally important.
In Merișani commune, Arges County, access to public health services was much restricted for the community, especially for women with low incomes, who, although they crossed long distances in Pitesti, did not have the possibility to perform abdominal ultrasounds of pregnancy, settled by the state. It was a long way before the Pitesti County Hospital purchased an ultrasound to be available in the hospital's outpatient setting. And this service became possible after the Partner for You Association (APT) supported an intense advocacy campaign at the county level. A first for the vulnerable community in Merișani was also the APT campaign, which convinced the local authority to allocate homeland to families who were facing multiple economic and social vulnerabilities. For both endeavors, the constant involvement in advocacy actions has made possible these civic paths worthy of admiration.
The civic life in the village also has its strengths, from the perspective of the proximity of the members of the civic groups for offline work meetings, but also through the fact that the wishes expressed by the community are prioritized. In the village of Ciobotea (jud. Arges), the problem of the lack of local public transport puts in difficulty many families forced to walk long distances to get to school, jobs or other activities in the daily routine. Supported by Sorina Bunescu and the CeRe team, the young people from Ciobotea decided to bring the problem of the lack of local transport to the attention of the authorities. For months, community meetings were held to identify the most effective tactics to empower the authorities to solve the problem. Among the actions that had the greatest impact were the postcards that the young people in the group made and transmitted to the county administration. Postcards included photos and messages about the community's need for access to public transportation. Following the campaign, the County Council included in the Public Transport Plan a route that connects Ciobotea with the rest of the world.
Let's go back to the mop and its footprints. Civic engagement is leaving signs now, when people and groups manage to convince the authorities to solve various things that are not going well in communities. But the traces of the mop are also seen over time, when more and more people draw inspiration from the stories of civic success and learn from each other what it's like with participation and how they bring people together for a common cause.
There are no "recipes" that guarantee civic successes, only people who are very determined to change something. The more, the more diverse, the better. The more motivated and persistent they are, the greater the chances that their initiatives will be heard and replicated. There are individuals and groups who are looking for us to work together on their campaign plan, and other groups and organizations we stay for almost a year or two, until they manage to get their project closer to success. There are groups that we work with and that cease their activity immediately after solving the urgency of their actions, but there are also initiative groups with a few members, which turn into associations. All these initiatives are changing perceptions in the long run. Let us no longer be afraid to pull the sleeve of public authority and dare more to demand change. At Merișani and Ciobotea, trust was planted!
*Photos belong to CeRe
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
No comment yet, add your voice below!