S.O.R. Birdlife

S.O.R. Birdlife

Many of you wish to know exactly what it is we are doing here in Romania. I thought that I’d use this blog entry to give you an idea of what Nancy does for her organization. First, for those who’ve not had the full history of us, we are Peace Corps volunteers stationed at two separate NGOs in the area of Cluj, Romania. The Peace Corps is very sensitive about publicity for a variety of reasons, our safety being one and it is strongly suggested that we not reference our site or the Corps in web postings. This, I suppose, is a wise policy and in the past I’ve tried to limit the times I’ve mentioned the P.C. But in order to explain what we do, it is necessary to explain a little of the selection process and why we work for our organizations.

Nancy and I are both Community Economic Development sector volunteers. That means our primary goal is not teaching, as about half of our volunteer colleagues do, nor do we work with government agencies, but rather with non profit organizations to stimulate economic development. I work for the Association of Organic Farmers of Romania. Nancy works with Societatea Ornitologica Romana – Birdlife Romania. It is the equivalent and associated with the Audubon Society in the United States.

It seems sort of universal with all C.E.D. volunteers that our organizations don’t know exactly what to do with this free help that they’ve asked for and been given, but one thing that Nancy and I both do is help clean up the written English used in communicating with non Romanians. Both of our organizations have people that speak excellent English but the written English is much rougher because prepositions, for example, do not translate directly. As I know that my poor attempts at writing in Romanian causes laughter in my office, some of the English that is often presented leaves a native English speaker scratching his head in wonder.

We also work on helping our organizations prepare grant applications. Some of these need to be submitted in English. Nancy’s main work with the bird society though is helping establish a commercial division. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog posting the birds in Romania are not familiar with feeders and bird boxes. This year, Birdlife Romania has a web site and ordering information allowing purchase of such things. And there are bird pins for sale. These are inexpensive – we’ve used them as token gifts – and quite attractive. The site is available in both Romanian and English – Nancy is responsible for the English version. http://www.shopsor.ro/ One problem with the concept though is that Romanians are not comfortable with the use of credit or debit cards and no one accepts a check. This is a cash society so it makes web transactions a little difficult. There is a type of C.O.D. process through the post office that is used, but the idea of calling in your VISA card number hasn’t arrived here yet

Both of us also work with foreign contacts. Later in March a representative of the British affiliate of the Audubon and Birdlife Romania is coming to Cluj for a visit. Nancy has been instrumental in promoting that contact. This person is a chief fund raiser for the bird societies international and should be able to offer valuable insights.

Sometimes we wonder if we make an impact, but by listing a few of the things the we’ve been involved with it seems that we’ve been busy. In the future I’ll do an entry of my work with the organic farmers.