Cancer Society and Heifer International

Heifer International and the Cancer Society

Last Saturday evening Nancy and I went to see the local Cluj basketball team play. The team is professional in the sense that the players are paid and last year its star player was a young American, LaVar Seal. This year LaVar is back and two other Americans are also on the club. The team represents Cluj in the Romanian number one league and also participates in some wider European matches. We have become good friends with LaVar’s Romanian agent, Simona, and we go to support her as much as watch the games, although they usually are pretty good entertainment.

This past weekend was a bit different. We went as volunteers selling raffle tickets for the Romanian Cancer Society. Another Peace Corps volunteer had suggested the raffle as a way to raise money and awareness of the Cancer Society’s efforts. The Society had never done a successful Tombola before and the director was a little leery, but with four dinners from area restaurants and a round trip bus ticket to Rome as rewards and the help of a dozen Romanian and American volunteers covering both entrances to the arena plus the generous donation of the Cluj team’s share of the gate receipts, the Society raised the equivalent of over $1,700 dollar. Small potatoes by American standards perhaps, but a great success here.

On Tuesday Nancy and I, along with two out of town Peace Corps volunteers visited the Romanian headquarters of Heifer International which is located here in Cluj. For those of you might not know Heifer, they are a group that offers a small start of livestock – goats, dairy cattle, pork, fish and bees here in Romania – to rural households that would otherwise be without. The households must promise not to eat the livestock until there is offspring, and then also must promise to pass some of the offspring on to others who can then participate. We had explained to us the projects currently underway in Romania and meet with the dedicated staff. We came away impressed with the efforts to revitalize a portion of the rural areas of this country.

Heifer has always been one of Nancy and my supported charities. As Christmas gifts we often donate a pig or goat or water buffalo in the name of a relative or friend. It was nice to know first hand, that the money is going toward meaningful projects. While the headquarters office was in a new building and certainly had all the refinements of a classy operation – a mark against it in our book - it was also apparent that money was actually working its way down to the underprivileged of the country in a way that could actually make a difference.

We both work for Non-profit agencies on a daily basis, but it was good to view or participate in different organizations work these past few days.. It gave us a sense of accomplishment that sometimes we miss in our own organizations.