Romania: The advent of the virtual civil society

The arrival of new means of communication has brought with it a new kind of civil society, a virtual civil society. In just a few years Romania has developed an online civil community that surprisingly has a higher number of participants than its offline counterpart.

The online movement took off slowly at first, as did Romania?s ?real? civil society, which is still struggling between the opposite forces of traditionalism and modernity. An attitude that is reflected in Romanian society as whole today, 18 years after the revolution that freed it from communism, but that characterises civil society in particular. Citizens are unsure as to whether they should or shouldn?t participate to public life and their lack of interest in civil participation can be seen as the direct inheritance from the paternal, communist state that until 1989 controlled all social aspects of Romanian life.

Today, Romanians are coming to grips with their lack of practice in social governance and the social values that communism failed to instil. At first, civil society hid behind the identities of the large NGOs and the media. But recently a real change has been taking place, with new social actors taking the stage and citizens claiming their rights to active participation. Even more recently the internet has become civil society?s ally, the means through which it talks about its offline social problems.

Blogvertising: the new fundraising frontier
Civil society?s Gala is an event that is held every year where NGOs are given prizes for their social commitment. The Gala organisers have decided to move with the times by going online in order to support NGOs in some of the hardest tasks they face, like finding volunteers, donors and receiving media coverage. The website also gives space to best practices, practical advise and the laws that regulate the sector.
www.galasocietatiicivile.ro

Last year the Gala organisers launched the Adopt an NGO campaign to promote NGOs in the public sphere. The campaign was initially targeted at Romanian bloggers and cyber-activists, who were called on to adopt an NGO by actively promoting it online by linking it in the web, writing articles about it and telling its success stories. The campaign was a huge success and in less than two months managed to streamline interest and donations to the NGOs involved.

Unexpectedly Adopt an NGO made its way into the hands of Ionut Oprea, communications director of a company called Media Pro interactiv, who had the idea of turning the campaign into a marketing strategy. This was how Adopt a Campaign came to be Romania?s first ever blogvertising campaign. A banner was created that was first published on one, then eight and by the end of the first week nearly 40 blogs had adhered to the campaign. Even more surprising was the 10 thousand euros that was raised by auctioning the banners online. The first sold for 100 lei (about 30 euros) but banners ended up selling for more than ten times the initial price (3, 330 euros). Buyers were given an advertisement package that entitled them to banners on all the subscribing blogs for 30 days. The money that was raised was awarded to the most voted of the 92 NGOs that participated in Gala?s 2007 edition.

The Adopt an NGO campaign managed to shake the offline non profit community as well as the online one and campaigners are now launching an campaign to promote volunteering, create a donor culture and encourage the public to participate in NGO projects under the slogan ?any action counts: give 2% of your time?.
http://adoptaunong.blogspot.com

Creating a volunteering culture
Volunteering is one of the biggest challenges that Romanian NGOs have to tackle. Why? Because there is no volunteering culture in Romania and there is no recognition of the social value of their work, especially in the media. Three online initiatives have been launched to try and remedy the situation.

Voluntariat: a web portal dedicated to anyone interested in volunteering. It contains specific information about volunteer opportunities in Romania and abroad, volunteer programmes and training courses. It also launches national campaigns to promote volunteering.
www.voluntariat.ro

Implica-te: an online programme aimed at real communities and that proposes to facilitate communication between three areas that are essential to the development of civil society ? volunteers, NGOs and companies. The web pages offer volunteers the opportunity to grow both professionally and on a personal level, NGOs the opportunity to put their ideas into practice and develop new projects and companies to improve their corporate social responsibility.
www.implica-te.ro

The 2% campaign: launched in 2005 for the first time by ARC (the association for community relations), the foundation for the development of civil society (FDSC) and the American chamber of commerce in Romania, this campaign to convince society of the important role that NGOs play in society is becoming more popular. The 2% campaign asks the public to donate 2% of their taxes to charity and NGOs to commit to issuing public statements on how this money is spent.
www.doilasuta.ro