Cooperazione & Relazioni internazionali
Romania: NGOs tune in to a new wavelength
Romanian NGOs are about to launch an online radio station entirely dedicated to the third sector: Radio-ONG. Read interviews with the project founders, Sandra Pralong & Magdalena Stoian
Radio-ONG is an online communication platform dedicated exclusively to medium and small NGOs and aims to increase their sustainability by training, education and knowledge sharing. This online project is being launched by The Romanian Donor?s Forum in partnership with Synergetica Foundation and financed by Phare 2005 – Program for Consolidation of Democracy in Romania.
The platform offers three communication mediums – audio, video and chat ? so as to facilitate interactive communication between the media and the general public. Radio-ONG provides civil society with a learning tool that encourages best practices to be shared and built on and is a first step towards cross-sectoral dialogue initiatives.
The project stems from two needs specific to the Romanian non profit sector: consolidating the capacity of NGOs to successfully absorb the EU?s Structural Funds and the development of specialized management skills that can contribute to NGO sustainability in the long term.
Third sector capacity building
The training sessions that Radio ONG proposes will address these two necessities by offering courses on common fields of interest such as: volunteer management, project management, communication management, human resources management, fundraising, finance and law. Radio ONG will also offer those projects that are entitled to European funds the possibility of strategic training and advice so as to facilitate the absorption of structural funds.
Radio ONG?s program grill will be divided in two sections: Training ( that will last for 90 minutes) and News and Networking (30 minutes) that will be broadcast twice a week to start with and will increase to five times a week over the next 5 months.
The sustainability challenge
The Project expects to be self-financed through several sources including through subscriptions to the training sessions, which will be carried out for a fee. Radio ONG will also sell audio and video advertising spaces and links and banner exchanges. They will also soon be developing fundraising campaigns to establish corporate partnerships.
The two NGOs behind the initiative are the Romanian Donors; Forum, a Federation of grant-making organizations that actively support the development of civil society in Romania by developing the capacity of the donor community and promoting philanthropy.(www.donorsforum.ro) and Fundazia SynergEtica, an NGO created in 2006 . Its mission is to promote fundamental ethical principals such as respect, dignity and justice into Romanian society (www.synergetica.ro).
Talia Delgado, founder of youth media NGO Brainstorming, interviewed the founders of Radio NGO for Vita Europe:
