Wednesday 28 April 2010

Jana visits Ramnicu Valcae for Global Footsteps! Part 4!

Fourth day, 17th March 2010
Irina and I went to see another project, which had been implemented in the community a short time ago. With the help of the Göttingen waste management, a system of waste separation had been installed and a new waste land was being built. As the other projects we saw, this too is EU-funded.

Back in Irina’s office, we did not stay for a long time but left for La Journée de la Francophonie, the French days in Valcea. Schools were presenting short plays by Molière and Romanian playwrites in the library and this was a nice opportunity to join some local cultural events without struggeling with the language barrier – at least almost, as the Romanian plays were in Romanian. We had lots of fun watching and couldn’t take our eyes off the smallest children running around in their traditional costumes.

Later, we went to the market place again to get some food for my journey from Valcea to Sibiu, which was due the next morning. In the evening, I went out alone and strolled through Valcea’s city centre, taking pictures and being happy with the experience!

Jana visits Ramnicu Valcae for Global Footsteps! Part 3!


Third day, 16th March 2010
Irina came to my place to pick me up at noon and we drove to her office together where I had some time to prepare myself for holding the presentation about Global Footsteps and the conference in August. At 2pm Irina, some of her colleagues and I went to a conference room in the municipality building for installing the beamer and the laptop. The head of the Social Department, Simina, Carmen and other employees joined us. When I started giving the talk, Irina translated from English into Romanian. After I had finished the women had a quite long discussion about the subject – everyone was impressed and thought of it as a great idea, but, as I understood, there were also doubts about Romania’s role in this network. How helpful could be their community for the network, as they have so many difficulties to cope with themselves? And could they profit from their engagement in conference and the future cooperations? Although I only understood a bit of what they were saying and Irina could not translate everything for me, it became clear to me that the conference and the linking between the communities and projects means something different depending what the basis of the respective project is. For the project in Valcea, becoming active in the GF network and investing time and work into it, seems to mean investing much more than a project from e.g. Germany would, because they have such a great lack of funds and employees. Being part of the network can be a great chance for them, but becoming active only seems to make, if they can really profit from this.

Having come to an end, everybody thanked Irina and me for the presentation and I felt quite relieved that it had gone well.

After a short break and some cookies, Irina, Simina, Carmen and I drove to the outskirts of Valcea to visit the MARA centre for autistic children, another project realized by the Social Department. The centre offers therapy for children and advice for their parents. The children live with their families but come to the centre for their therapy every day. The MARA also is EU-funded and the only centre dealing with autism in the area of Ramnicu Valcea. Studying psychology, this visit was very intersting for me as I already had courses about autism but never had met autistic people before. A worker from the centre gave us a tour through different therapy rooms, presenting different groups of children to us, who ranged between 2 or 3 years up to about 11 years. The groups also differed in the children’s type of autism, and so did the therapy. Some therapists were working on the children’s concentration through drawing or making simple crafts, others focussed on language, as some autists hadrly ever speak. We also saw a gymnastics room where the children can play and move to music during their therapy. There we encountered a little boy having the svant-syndrom. According to our guide, he was very gifted doing all sorts of calculations. At the end of the tour we all were sad for leaving.



Jana visits Ramnicu Valcae for Global Footsteps! Part 2!

Second day, 15th March 2010
Irina picked me up in the morning and we went to her office in the municipality building. We had a short meeting with the deputy mayor to whom we presented Global Footsteps, the conference and the purpose of my stay in Valcea.
purpose of my stay in Valcea.

Most of the projects that exist are being implemented by the city council. The reason for this is, as I understood it, that it is very hard to get financial support for projects, as the country does not have much money. Therefore, many projects are funded by the European Union, because they can not get money from the state or the community. Getting these funds and running projects seems to be easier for a city coucil than for a private person.

Irina had chosen some projects, which are being run by the Social Department. So, after we met with the deputy mayor, we went to a meeting with the head of this department. The head seemed very interested in the charity, the conference and her department having the chance to participate in this network. She even called for an employee, a young woman called Simina, who spoke English very well and showed a great interest in representing the Social Department at Footstep 12.

Together with Simina, Irina and I went visiting a project realised by the Social Department. The IOANA centre gives support to homeless people and tries to make a normal life possible for them. The centre can host 21 persons, who share seven bedrooms à three beds. Every day, one meal is served. The project in EU-funded and has been opened 1,5 years ago – since then, 100 people have been enlisting the centre’s assistence and 62 have lived in the centre’s rooms. The stays are ment to be temporary, but there is no fixed time limit – the beneficials can stay until they have the possiblity to move to another place. People can also get medical, social and psychological help. A priest is coming to the centre several times a week and meets with the people. He also offers small loans if necessary and has been a great supporter of the centre since its foundation by donating books and other useful things. Unfortunately I could not meet him – this would have been very interesting. The centre tries to reintegrate the homeless people into the job market as well by offering help with job applications. At the centre we met the director of IOANA, who showed us around. She told us, that the centre had difficulties regaring financing and staff: As the payments for employees are very low, it is almost impossible to find specialists willing to work for them. In this moment, there is no psychologist and no nurse avaliable. She also showed a great interest in the conference and especialily in the type of work other centres in other linked communities are doing and how they are dealing with difficulties. We also met two people living in the centre and in the end were shown some pictures of homeless people taken in the moment of their arrival at the centre and after some time later – which made a great difference. As I understood, this centre is very important for the community as many people are poor and a great amount of them are living on the street. This is the only project in the area of Valcea to deal with homeless people’s problems.

After the visit to the IOANA centre for homeless people, we went to see an NGO, which does mainly environmental and youth projects. A friend of Irina’s is working for them. One of their last activities was a litter pick around Valcea, because litter is a very serious problem in Romania. Now they are trying to protect an old oak, which has historic importance for the community. Another future project could a small farm for endangered species in Romania. Apparently they have many good ideas, but a great lack of funds, which is a serious limit to their possibilities. The director told us that he would like to send a younger member of the NGO, being more receptive and open for those experiences than older people. He promised me to send a short overview of their projects and goals to me via email. Irina also told him about the charity shop in Cheltenham and he had the idea to open a similar shop in Ramnicu as well, selling products from the communities connected through GF. He would send the money back to Cheltenham. He also thought of sending some craft products from Romania to the FootSteps shop.

To end the day, Irina took me to a very very nice market, I could have taken about 100 pictures of all the farmer women selling there fruits and vegetables. Then I was brought back to my room and had a rest. In the evening, Irina came back to take me with her to her home for dinner.



Jana Eyssel visits Ramnicu Valcae for Global Footsteps!

Jana Eyssel from Gottingen, a long time member of Global Footsteps and part of the Footstep 12 conference management team paid a visit to our Romanian link, here is the first of four reports on her Global Venture.

Morgan Phillips had asked me to help with organising the next Global Footsteps conference in Cadca, Slovakia, in August 2010. My job was to visit communties, which are part of the Global Footsteps network, to identify community capacity building projects and to invite project representatives to the forthcoming Footstep 12 conference. Therefore, I prepared myself to travel to Ramnicu Valcea, representing Romania in the Global Footsteps network. Irina Sandulescu, whom I knew from the Footstep 10 in 2005, was my contact person in Valcea and organised my stay on ground. She is working for the municipality and thus has a good knowledge of projects in her town. Before my departure, she presented me a list of projects, among which we hoped to find one or two, that could be part of the conference and the future network.

First day in Romania, 14th March 2010
After a very long ride on the coach from Leipzig to Romania, which took about 26 hours and served as a nice introduction to the country of my destination, since I was the only German on the trip and everybody spoke Romanian, I finally got off the coach in Sibiu. Irina's husband was in town and picked me up. Since we had to wait for Irina’s brother who would arrive a few hours later from Italy by coach, we went for a drink to the historic centre of the town.

Sibiu is situated in Transylvania and for a long time has been the centre of the Saxons living in Transylvania, or Siebenbürgen, as they call it. This German heritage is still apparent, for instance in the architecture. Some streets reminded me of old German villages, which seemed very paradox to me, as I was quite far away from home and was being prepared to discover a country and a culture very different from mine.

The town also hosts a great deal of sights and has an important cultural heritage. In 2007 it has been the European Capital of Culture and therefore the picturesque historic centre is very well renovated. To profit from our time in this nice place, we visited the Brukenthal Museum, which exhibits a large collection of paintings and beautiful furniture from the 18th century.

In the afternoon, having picked up Irina’s brother, we left Sibiu for Ramnicu Valcea. Irina had prepared dinner for us and later brought me to the room where I could stay during my days in Valcea.


Thursday 22 April 2010

Election Fever: HUSTINGS

With Election Fever gripping the country I thought I'd turn this email into a blog post (I got permission)! It is from an intern at Oxfam and is all about the upcoming HUSTINGS in Cheltenham next week. Try and get along if you are about!

Hi,


May I introduce myself? I am Alison Shaw, currently working as an intern assistant political campaigner in the Oxfam South West Campaigns office. We are active on a range of campaigning issues seeking to work with many individuals, organisations, local communities and coalitions to promote our concerns to politicians, the media, activists and young people.

We form part of many coalitions, one of which is Ask the Climate Question. This is an initiative to make climate change a key issue for the 2010 General Election. It is organised by Oxfam, WWF, RSPB, Christian Aid, Tearfund, Greenpeace, CAFOD, Stop Climate Chaos & the Green Alliance. The campaign is focussed on key marginal constituencies, of which Cheltenham is one.

With the General Election fast approaching there are lots of events, debates and discussions happening across the country. You are invited to join us to Ask the Climate Question.

Your local hustings is on Tuesday 27th April in Cheltenham

Time: doors open 7.00pm for 7.30pm start, 9.30pm finish
Location: The Sanctuary, St. Andrew’s United Reformed Church, Montpellier Street, Montpellier, Cheltenham GL50 1SP
Question time panel:
James Green – Labour Party
Martin Horwood – Liberal Democrat Party
Mark Coote – Conservative Party
Peter Bowman – UKIP Party

Come along to listen or ask your Prospective Parliamentary Candidates questions on climate issues.

To submit your questions email Roger James at rjames@oxfam.org.uk

Wednesday 14 April 2010

News from Kosimbo


We have just received some positive news from one of our linked projects 'Kosimbo' in our linked community of Kisumu in Kenya.

Margaret Kawala founder of Kosimbo will be representing Kisumu at the forthcoming Footstep 12 conference in Cadca Slovakia, in an email to us she tells us:

'Kosimbo projects are changing the faces and the mindset of our community. They know that a woman can do wonders when given a chance.'

The Kosimbo Women's and Orphans project was set up in the rural area of Kirindo on the shores of Lake Victoria. Its major aim is to provide basic primary healthcare for people in this marginalised community. This healthcare is currently given a few times a week from a temporary structure. Promised funds to allow the construction of a more permanent community dispensary and some permanent staff have yet to materialise from the Local Government pot. Kosimbo, is however making significant progress in other areas and Margaret remains positive:

Other doors are opening and people are getting treated in our temporary structure. We initiated an adult education class and it was very pleasant to see old and young women involved in different sporting activities during our district sports day held on 8th april.

We are partnering with the national library and at the end of this month we shall be given two hundred books to keep and we'll manage them so that people can get fair access to the books.This is a great achievement as more people and students will get a chance to read.

As more people understand that our work is actually benefiting a lot of people, they are beginning to offer their services, I believe that the library will really be of benefit to our people.

I'm really praying for more networks so that Kirindo moves from being a fishing village with girls getting married at 14 years and boys also going fishing at the same age to a community where our next doctors will come from.

I'm also happy to report that Plan Kenya wants to work with the youth and our youth department is soon to be registered.

Global Footsteps offers opportunities for individuals to travel to projects situated across our network of linked communities. Volunteers who choose to travel on Global Ventures have a unique experience, learn about the community they visit at a grass roots level, develop their professional skills and make a significant difference to the project they work with. There are many opportunities at Kosimbo from health and education through to construction and social work. In her latest email Margaret has expressed a particular interest in finding a volunteer child counsellor. If you think you could spare two weeks, two months or more to help make a difference in this beautiful but marginalised part of the world please get in touch with Global Footsteps co-ordinator Morgan Phillips via info@global-footsteps.org

[This of Global Footsteps member Aby Morley interviewing Margaret Kawala of Kosimbo was taken in summer 2009 during a Global Venture to Kenya, which you can read more about on earlier posts to this blog. If you would like to hear the interview in full please follow this link: Kosimbo Interview 2009]