Rudezis
Duration of the case: 1 year (February 2004 – February 2005)
Prepared by: Nicolae Cuta
Romanian Association for Community Development, Romania
March 2005
Abstract
Members of the “Rudezis” Association from Giurgita village (SW Romania) participated to ALLAVIDA’s
complex capacity building program for community based organizations and in its frame they implemented
an educational project for Roma children in their community. The case study presents how the program
affected the organisation and its members, the community and the beneficiaries.
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Background
In the commune Giurgita from Dolj County –situated at 42 km South from Craiova- live 3.400 inhabitants in
1.240 homes. The commune is formed from 3 villages: Portaresti, Giurgita and Curmatura. 230 families are
assisted by the state (receive the guaranteed minimum income).
“The situation is critical in our commune: there is no economic potential, the only living sources are social
securities. People are poor. The former state-owned farm does not exist anymore. The silo is closed, the economy
is zero. Daily, in front of the Post office you can see 50 - 100 people waiting to receive theirs own or children
allowance. The 2002 drought brought a lot of people to desperation, the wheat and the maize not being enough to
feed the yard birds and animals.” (Training participant)
In Giurgita live 220 Roma people, all unemployed and part of them illiterates. Some of them don’t have any
ID and don’t benefit on social aids. They don’t own agrarian land.
There are registered 10 institutionalised children and 13 handicapped people.
Though Rudezis members don’t have a stated vision of the community, they believe that the development of
organisation will affect the community, especially by creating work places in agriculture.
“When Rudezis will become income generator we will finance small projects developed by students’ organisations
from our community, like Allavida financed our project.” (Vali, Rudezis’ president)
About the organization
For details about the organization you could visit our web site www.ardc.ro.
Concept and Objectives
The 8 “Rudezis” association founders emanated from a 15 member parochial committee that volunteered for
2 years beside the Orthodox Church from Portaresti.
They raised funds for different donations: toys and maoquettes for kindergartens, Christmas gifts for
children, food and clothes for poor people. Too, they helped Roma people to get IDs.
Although initially they intended to help all disadvantaged people from community (Roma, lonely elders,
institutionalised children, and disabled people) they focused on poor families with many children.
“We wish to help all poor people from our commune, to participate at raising the living standard and [..] to reduce the
social problems”. (Training participant)
The community’s perception on the activity of the organisation varies a lot.
“For us, the poor, means a lot that somebody help us. Young people, like us, that have children are satisfied about
the establishment of this organization in our community.” (Roma mother)
“When we have a problem we don’t go to the mayor or to Roma leader, but we go to Mr. Vali [the leader of the
organization]. And this is not only for now, but also for long ago. […] He always listened to us, it didn’t matter we are
Roma. He always spoke nicely to us.” (Roma mother)
“People started to come to organization to tell their problems.” (Training participant)
“People are a little reticent, but according as they will see some results, they will change their opinion.” (Community
member)
“For instant people don’t perceive us. We should have some results first.” (Training participant)
“People are conservatory, they are slow on the uptake new ideas. They need to see results. (Community member)
“The elders -of 50-60 years old- are not too interested. Some people say that Vali is too young for this.” (Roma
mother)
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The negative attitude of a part of community is due to the membership of the “Rudezis” founders at the
National Liberal Party. (Actually, their president was elected mayor after this survey took place.)
“The commune elite can’t accept that someone [like me] can rise from below and to become established in
community.” (Vali)
“Part of the community mix our NGO with National Liberal Party. We have to work at the delimitation of the 2
aspects. We made this distinction. In NGO there were initially 2 members from other party, but they left when the
electoral campaign started. Accidentally we are member both of the NGO and of the party.” (NGO member)
“Most people say that Vali made an association to become mayor. But we, the poor, know that it is not true.” (Roma
mother)
For “Rudezis” founders ALLAVIDA program1 came in the moment when they decided to establish a formal
organisation, until then they have been working like an informal group. At that time they were decided to
learn to develop projects and to establish partnerships with other organisations.
“[ALLAVIDA] project came just in time, it was a divine gift, we needed very much such support.[…] We all are young
and we want to develop a lot of projects.” (Training participant)
The organisation focused on poor families with more than 3 children living from social assistance. They are
both Roma and Romanians. Their needs are multiple:

children’s nourishment is not appropriate

the homes are not hygienic

the living conditions don’t afford students to learn (6-7 persons live in one room)

students don’t have clothes and footwear to go to school

lack of support from family for students.
“Being a teacher myself, I thought at the children that get lost because of school drop out.” (Training participant)
The objective of the project was to prevent the school drop out of the primary school students that face
learning difficulties.
Results
27 students from grades I-III were direct beneficiaries of the project. Main activity of the project was the
remedial courses (52 hours), accompanied by some socialisation activities for children (Christmas
celebration, 2 excursion, games and cultural activities).
At the end of the project the beneficiaries can read and are better integrated in their classes, though it is a
good chance they will be promoted to the next class.
Although, because the project covered only the first school semester, not all the results were sustainable.
“Now [after the project ending], my son stopped learning again. He forgot even the poems he learned” (Roma
mother)
“The situation of these students didn’t change. In order to be consistent, the project should last 10 months.’ (School
director)
On the other hand, these kinds of appraisals could dissimulate (hidden) interests of different stakeholders.
Such an example, some parents would like the project to continue because of the provisions their children
received to remain after classes at the remedial program. The school director preferred that with the money
spent in this project to buy several computers for her school.
“The school should taken the advantage of these money. With this amount we could buy 4 PCs for school” (School
1 Community Based Organisations Development
director)
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The main change for the beneficiary was the new attitude of children: they started to come regularly at
school and they have a positive attitude facing the school.
Too, the parents became more confident and cooperative.
“The children hardly waited to come to the [remedial] program. Some of them came even if they were missing the
regular classes in the morning. One little girl came to the program wearing her mother’s boots because she didn’t
have her own footwear. (Training participant)
“We are confident that the association [“Rudezis”] will help us further. We can help them, too, with volunteer work,
cleaning. (Roma mother)
Organisation’s credibility and visibility in community enhanced because of this project. It’s members’
confidence increased, too.
“At the beginning we were skeptics, but after first project we became confident. […] We got closer each other and
became friends. (“Rudezis” member)
Lessons learned
Beyond project management aspects, the project team learned how to deal with beneficiaries, partners,
authorities and other stakeholders.
“Next time we will try to approach separately the educational and non-educational aspects.”
“After the start of the project we had to explain to the teachers what is the purpose of the project because they felt
offended believing that this project would demonstrate their professional incompetence. “
“We should make the beneficiaries [parents] to do something in the project. We will just help them to do.” (Project
team members)
For the future, the members intend to enlarge their organisations’ domain to income generating, in order to
satisfy a big need in community: the lack of workplaces. In this sense, some declared expectations, both
from community and NGO members go beyond the limit between civil society sector and the economic
society. The social enterprise concept seems to describe well their new organisational vision.
Too, their future plans are related on the better co-operation with the mayoralty, especially if Vali and the
NLP will gain the local elections.
The organisational development progress is obvious, while “Rudezis” members declare they intend to create
a data base about commune inhabitants, to have 2-3 fulltime employees, to co-operate with all local
institutions and with other organisations, to open organisation membership to beneficiaries end other
community members.
“The NGO will support the farming land owners by contributing at the farming works costs. People are interested in
a [new] farming association.” (“Rudezis” member)
“The association should support people in community to start business activities, [..] to create workplaces in small
farms.” (Community member)
“The association will work in partnership with the mayoralty’s Department of Social Services [that Vali intend to
establish after elections].
The organization should focus on farming activities, not only on social ones. It will become income generating, but
the profit will be invested in community. We will fund students’ community projects, like ALLAVIDA funded ours.’”
(Training participant)
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The Impact in community
Main impact that this project provoked in community is people awareness about the role of the NGOs in
community. Though some people’s –especially beneficiaries’- expectations are related on “Rudezis” (to
continue its activity), others expressed their desire to be established more NGOs in their commune. Too, a
very important change is that simple poor people, regularly overwhelmed by their daily problems, started to
discuss community vision, to identify community needs and to propose solutions beyond their family
boundaries. And these solutions are not related anymore on local or central authorities, but by people from
their community.
“It is desirable to appear other organizations, too. The society educates itself through these community
organizations. These make the people to communicate. Only one organization can’t deal with all the problems in
community. In village there are young people that can be involved. Intellectuals can be attracted, too, in such
organizations. Vali should train them in this respect. (School director)
“The organization [“Rudezis”] can have a role in increasing the living standard. Nobody else is seeing about
commune people’s life. The organization can succeed [in this] if people from community support it with ideas or
contributions. They [“Rudezis”] should organise public events where people could develop new initiatives.
Contact
informations:
(Community
member)
Contacts information:
Nicolae Cuta,
nicucuta@gmail.com
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