Marian Ursan, Executive Director of the Carousel: "Not even death plays fair with the people on the streets"
Marian Ursan is the Executive Director of the Carousel organization and fights for the rights of the homeless. Over the years, he says, people have become increasingly open to lend a helping hand. It was a pleasant surprise to discover this availability. However, the problems faced by vulnerable and homeless people are so serious that they need the intervention of the whole of society in order to be able to be solved.
You started working in the midst of vulnerable communities with HIV/AIDS, and then you started CAROUSEL. What was this transition like?
I didn't get away from the HIV/AIDS problem. Even though we were talking initially about everything that hiv infection means, we realized that there are categories that are much more vulnerable compared to others in the face of HIV infection.
For example, for a man who lives with HIV and eventually has access to treatment, how can he get his treatment if he is sitting on the street? Maybe he has lost his treatment, because he does not have a place to keep the pills safe. Somehow we have not re-profiled ourselves, but we have recalibrated our messages so that we are easier to understand. Let's explain that most of the time this problem is much more complex. We are also talking about the lack of identity documents or where to take a shower or where to wash some clothes, all kinds of things that affect the vulnerable.
How did you think the community would react in the beginning?
We were quite skeptical about the ability to attract resources. We realized that it's a field that's not attractive, that they're very hard-to-digest topics. We knew this and that's why we stubbornly went on to keep going in that direction.
We are talking about a social service – it must be given to the people who need it.
It's a delicate matter to promote and bring their message and problem into society. We're talking about people who face multiple vulnerabilities. Not only do they sit on the street, but they also have addiction problems, they are involved in drug use, alcohol, they do not have papers, and all this is gathered in a man you avoid on the street.
For us, at first the most important thing was to understand what was happening in communities. We knew from the very beginning that what we were going to do was to weight this trend of aggravation of the situation. It wasn't something new to us, there weren't people we didn't know.
How did the community respond to carousel's message and actions?
I was surprised to see that in most cases, I had good reactions. I was living in my movie, I was worried that people wouldn't understand. We underestimated the wider community and what we underestimated was business. We do not use public money, and then our funding option is aimed precisely at companies, individual donors and grants provided by international structures.
We really wanted to attract private resources into our work, I mean the CSR components and, with a few exceptions, it worked. I imagined that it might be a risk for companies to associate their image with phenomena like this. This is where I was wrong.
What have you learned over time about the organization?
We realized that we needed to professionalize our services even more, beyond this direct work on the ground. We realized that we needed to update our website for which at first we had no passion. I said if someone wanted to get to know us, come here. Well, I was wrong. Someone had to help us completely redo our site, we learned how to talk about our work, how to be more transparent.
What is the relationship like with partners and funders?
I have always believed and hoped that the relationship with a private financier is not limited to funding, but it means building a partnership together. We wanted people to get to know us, to know not just what we do on a certain component. We would like them to understand what we do in general in the organization, how we behave towards the needs of the people, how we try to mobilize those people to go much further, to have the strength and the confidence that they too can make a series of changes for the better.
We always invite people to get to know us, to know our work and then to talk to those we help. That way it seems to me that there's a better understanding of how we work. There is a better understanding of the needs of those people, and it also seems to me that it is a very valuable source of ideas. Of course we have to keep a balance and not turn some of these services into a kind of tourism. It's important, too, but beyond that, it's important that there's transparency in your work and those who support you come to understand what's going on with the resources that they allocate. Whether we are talking about a man who donates a pair of boots, or we are talking about a company.
Was there the same openness from individual donors?
I think the level of trust is growing and the way the wider community gets involved encourages us. This feels different in a good, positive way, from year to year. I think about the number of people who call us, I think about the messages we get, the people who apply for volunteering, because they've heard of good things that we've done.
What was your soul campaign? How did the "Radio against Loneliness" campaign start?
The moment we thought about doing a radio campaign it was a little different because we didn't say about food, clothes, but about something that has to do with people, beyond all the problems, and the trend of aloneness that is increasing from day to day.
We started distributing radios in the pandemic. If you remember, the streets were deserted except for those who had nowhere to go. There was a fantastic lack of information and all that people knew on the street is what they heard from some, from others, who were more vocal. Most of the time it wasn't valid information, we realized that people had nowhere to get information. At that time, if we talk about the Internet and TV, we know what the information was, and then we realized that the idea of radio would fit, because on the radio for now the information has remained in a correct area. How to get people to access information especially those related to covid?
We realized from their reactions that the effect was much stronger and it wasn't limited to a series of information about COVID, but rather people were saying that they were glad to hear something else, even music. In one way or another for them, being alone on the street, it was less difficult and that's when we realized that here is an aspect that somehow we neglected, not as an organization, but also as a society. In one way or another we contribute to the alienation of people.
I remember when we distributed the first radios, people kept changing stations until they came across a voice, didn't stop at the music or I know what; they listened to a voice, that's what they wanted to hear. A lot of people liked the radio theater, the stories.
What are the obstacles at the moment, for organizations like CAROUSEL?
We need a lot of things, but at the same time we are aware that the biggest and strongest wall of the past I think is the one related to how people access health services.
We all know that this problem is not one related only to a certain social category that has a significant difficulty in accessing these medical services. We all know or know someone, who was not feeling well, but thought two or three times before going to the hospital or the doctor, because he anticipated that the system was not OK, that they would not benefit from services as he would like. Here it seems to me that it is a structural deficiency, and this is reflected much more oppressively in the case of people who face poverty.
We're not just talking about the reactions of people in the system, we're also talking about how many obstacles you have before you get in front of a doctor. I am referring here to the lack of identity documents, the lack of a family doctor to prepare a referral for you, the health card, the insurances, all the barriers to which are added and the lack of empathy on the part of some. The ones in whom you put your last hope.
What stories from the community do you carry with you?
99% of stories are sad because they are stories where people die. They die alone, in the bushes, in the street, away from the people they love. We have a collection of pictures in the organization and when I go through them, they relive very difficult moments.
Ultimately, not even death plays fair with them. The people we are talking about now, no decent death can have: to be dressed, to have taken a bath, to have eaten before, to have listened to a kind word from someone. I think we have a duty to look at society as well, because for this situation, one man cannot be made responsible.
Photo source: Personal Facebook Page and Carousel
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