What problem are you solving?:

Awareness raising and advocacy platform for people to better understand the challenges of the policy development and its expected good outcomes in the field of pensions, employment, social security, social protection, health and security, social inclusion, family, migrants etc., using two approaches:
-the good governance based approach, and
-the Human Rights based approach, particularly the 3rd generation of Human Rights – group and solidarity rights
“No excuses” is trying to increase the participation of citizens and Civil Society Organizations in monitoring policies and programs of “Ministerul Muncii, Familiei si Protectiei Sociale” (Ministry of Labor, Family and Social Protection) in Romania. There are ‘No excuses’ for:
– having the law and not applying it,
– not allocating the budget to develop the policy,
– not assess the social program evaluability, and
– mismanagement (misconduct and negligence) in implementing the policy

Describe your idea:

Our experience has taught us that making a difference requires time, unwavering commitment, collaboration, risk-taking and innovation.
“No excuses”:
-is going to promote the initiatives of NGOs and/or of informal groups of citizens in the policy development in the above mentioned fields, thus both motivating them to engagement in advocacy and lobbying campaigns and helping them to build and consolidate their base of constituency,
-is getting people – both men and women – involved in the public debate on policy development & change in the above mentioned fields,
-is inviting policy champions to promote the policy,
-is creating of bridging mechanisms like “ad hoc task forces”, by example, and
-is providing the users with necessary information on the performance of the Ministry of Labor, Family and Social Protection in policy development, knowledge and contacts

What country will this operate in?: Romania

Who are you?:

FUNDAŢIA “ŞANSE EGALE PENTRU FEMEI”
MISSION
To promote equal opportunities and treatment for women and men.
SCOPE
To raise women’s standing and visibility in their professions and communities, so they may contribute to the greatest possible extent to the economic, social and political transformations in Romania and throughout the world.

Main field of activity
Civic and policy impact
-Public policies and good governance
Secondary field of activity:
Education and research
-VET
Social
-Access to employment for vulnerable people

Main intervention areas / programmes:
1. Watch Dog – Good governance (including anti corruption strategies)
2. Resource Center for Gender Equality
3. Vocational Education and Training (VET)
4. Consultancy and technical assistance
5. Design and evaluation of Social Programs
6. Networking for Development (including advocacy and lobby)

What problem are you solving?:

Intense anticorruption campaigns developed in Romania in the recent years have sought to put pressure on official institutions and to place corrupt practices under the spotlight. The coalitions initiated by SAR in the field of education, parliamentary reform and local government have engaged important groups of stakeholders in anticorruption and pro-integrity activities, getting beyond the NGO community to include students’ organizations and unions, among others. But due to the economic crisis and political disappointment, anticorruption efforts do not seem to reach beyond an ever larger circle of activists to a sufficient number of voluntary contributors. With the lack of voluntary, spontaneous watchdogs and whistle-blowers, and almost absent citizen involvement in monitoring and reporting corruption, no effort is sustainable in the long run.

Describe your idea:

SAR supports the development of a broader anticorruption constituency that would actively employ not only civil society and official bodies, but also the larger community of citizens, through individual whistle-blowers and monitors. The project thus proposes the creation of an anticorruption portal ‘http://www.romaniacurata.ro’ (a pilot web page is in place), which will focus on interactive dialogue and public participation, as well as collaboration with national prevention and prosecution bodies- the National Integrity Agency (NIA) and the National Anticorruption Department (NAD). The portal would offer citizens the opportunity to actively discuss and report individual cases, as well as to inform themselves on the possibilities they have to defend their rights. Moreover, it would publish whistleblowers` reports and journalistic investigations (aided by such reports among other sources), and activate and support a network of investigative journalists in local and central media.

What country will this operate in?: Romania

Who are you?:

Established as a think tank in 1996, the Romanian Academic Society (SAR) aims to further the ideas of freedom, democracy and good governance in Eastern Europe. Starting with our own country we seek to raise the public awareness level of policy issues, contribute through research and advocacy to informed policy formulation and assist administrative reform through performance assessment. We believe that countries can do more or less out of their European accession process and our goal is to help improve their performance in this process so that integration brings a maximum of benefits. Finally, we are confident that both Europes – the old and the new one – will meet each other in an enlarged European Union where civil society will be a crucial actor.

What problem are you solving?:

Chaotic urban development and the ongoing aggressions against the built heritage of Bucharest have been noted and commented upon by many observers, including expert groups, NGOs, and the media. The massive deterioration of urban heritage in Bucharest was documented by the Presidential Commission for Built Heritage, Historical and Natural Sites in 2009 (The report is available at http://patr.presidency.ro).

The poor performance of local government and passivity of local communities were blamed for the situation, but the lack of generally available information on construction and planning, heritage and urban environment issues, was found at the root of the problem.

Describe your idea:

The project aims to provide the public with a coherent set of information on each of the four domains: construction, planning, heritage and urban environment protection.

Activities:

a) Website development. The main project activity will consist in developing a website (www.lexcivitas.ro) that will present in structured and explanatory manner information on each of the four relevant domains identified above. For each domain, the website will contain:
– introductions/general presentations;
– national legislation and planning regulations applicable in Bucharest;
– guides and forms to be used in specific instances;
– glossary;
– contact form (see section b) ).

b) Guidance. Website visitors will have the possibility to report urbanistic problems to the Association by filling in an online form, and the Association will provide guidance on such problems.

c) Website promotion, including: launch event, media coverage, leaflets and brochures.

What country will this operate in?: Romania

Who are you?:

Mission: promoting sustainable urban development, protecting urban heritage and green areas of Bucharest.

The Association:
-has made surveys on the urbanistic status of Bucharest; the report “Bucharest, a disastrous city planning”, became the reference on the urbanistic problems of Bucharest;
-has monitored the activities of the General Council of Bucharest concerning the approval of urbanistic plans
-has assisted over 50 citizens on problems involving urbanistic, heritage or environmental issues;
-has organized public debates and media campaigns promoting/supporting legislative changes; was invited to many public debates on proposed legislative changes by the Parliament and by the Government.

The Association was quoted approximately 500 times in the national media and 10 times in the international media (Der Spiegel, Das Erste, TV5, etc.) and was awarded the Group for Social Dialogue Prize for promoting the values of civil society and rule of law, for the year 2008.

What problem are you solving?:

The project’s main goal is to bring young citizens into the public debate by offering them an online and interactive way of getting involved into the public arena. Recent research shows that young citizens tend to be more responsive to online interactions, consequently we chose as means of involving them into the public debate through online petitions and deliberations. A secondary objective is that educating and developing democratic attitudes and values through involving in a virtual community. The project will create an interactive and innovative way of involving youth in the public debate that will further develop democratic values and attitudes and will enhance their civic and political participation.

Describe your idea:

There is a widespread agreement within social sciences on the essential role that political culture of a society plays in the sustaining of democratic governance. In the case of Romania there are many deficiencies in terms of pro-democratic attitudes and values among youth.
The main target group: teenagers and high school students
The secondary target groups: NGOs as well as public and education institutions dealing with youth problems and issues.
– identify and create an online database with NGOs, public and education institutions focused on the issues of the youth
– create an online interactive platform with 2 important components: one component designed as a place for petitioning or initiating resolutions ; – create a model of online interactive platforms that can later be used for involving non-organized civil society in the policy-making process through online public debate.

What country will this operate in?: Romania

Who are you?:

Asociatia Pro Democratia (APD) is a non-governmental, non profit and non-party affiliated organization established in 1990. APD currently has 31 clubs in which more that 1000 citizens (members and volunteers) participate in implementing our projects.
The mission of Asociatia Pro Democratia is to strengthen democracy at national and international level by encouraging civic participation. The main fields of interest of APD are: strengthening the relation between the electorate and its elected representatives, observing the correctness of the electoral process, civic education; citizens’ participation in the process of public policies drafting, the transparency of public institutions and their control by the civil society; protecting human rights.

What problem are you solving?:

The local city administration of Timisoara has a lot of good initiatives in promoting activities on they’re website (http://www.primariatm.ro/) and involving citizens off-line via the Neighborhood Consultative Councils (http://www.primariatm.ro/index.php?meniuId=15&viewCat=558) . But even though a couple of years ago they had an active forum, they have deleted it some time ago.

Describe your idea:

Develop the CITY Wikipedia that allows every citizen to make it’s contribution and together get the City Hall to cooperate in a meaningful way, through various services.

Such a platform should:
– achieve large popular involvement and help run our city (City Hall employees can’t be everywhere at all times while the citizens can).
– maintain an Open Street Map overlayed with citizen reports
– digitize and maintain public interest documents
– keep track of current projects, draft norms of the public administration in a plain and clear language format and can answer direct question
– allot more that doesn’t fit in a 1000 word description

All the content of the project will be made available under CC BY-SA 3.0 Romania, while the software will be made available under a GPL license, making thus the whole system easy to replicate for any city in Romania or abroad.

What country will this operate in?: Romania

Who are you?:

I’m 31 years old and I live in Timisoara, Romania. I’m a IT developer and I own part of a web hosting company. I am also a member of APTI (Technology & Internet Association, apti.ro)

I believe that we can use the Internet to reshape our society for the better.

A basic idea of a wiki page has already been started a while ago at openTM.ro, with a couple of projects from the citizens side (Free WiFi Hotspots in Timisoara and a project for digitizing information regarding a nice locations in the city).

What problem are you solving?:

-In 2008, at the last elections in Romania(uni nominal vote for Parliament) only 39.26% of people participated(source:BEC “Central Electoral Bureau”).Tacking this into consideration, the lack of interest and participation of civil society in political life represents a big problem of democracy, on which we, the civil society, need to act on.

Describe your idea:

A tool for civil society that will increase transparency and accountability of political class.
This site will be divided in two main parts:1.laws that are proposed to be approved to the Parliament, people’s opinion upon each law through surveys and comparing graphics during and after the legislative process.Also we want to give chance to people of having law initiatives and arguments.
Once a month we will invite one of the Parliamentarians to an online chat.
We hope in future this site will also become a tool for Parliament in the relation with citizens.2.Providing information on groups of influence in the political life and mass-media.
This will empower civil society with a better understanding of politics and mass-media and support the transparency process. The purpose of our project is to rise the accountability of civil society to affront all the changes in our country.

What country will this operate in?: Romania

Who are you?:

OPAC- Organization For Art and Culture, is a young NGO founded in the beginning of 2009 by a group of young people with initiative. The aims of our organizations are related with arts, culture, youth, global issues, active citizenship, democracy and social inclusion.

What problem are you solving?:

Although the adoption, in March 2008, of the electoral system based on the uninominal vote should have brought a change in the way the MPs relate to their constituency, this failed to happen. The electoral campaign in November 2008 proved the fact that new candidates are not yet prepared to communicate directly with their constituency.
The level of trust Romanian citizens have in the Parliament, the main legislative institution, dropped over the years to a critical level.
Through the present project E-Civis intends to promote the activity that takes places in the Parliament and the actions of those MPs that are actually fulfilling their responsibilities.

Describe your idea:

On the E-Civis web page, which will be built during the next months, there will be one section called The Romanian Parliament for Everyone, which will contain the following sub-sections:
The sub-section The Legislative Process for Everyone will include general information about the legislative process in the Romanian Parliament. This sub-section will also include, every two weeks, an analysis of a law proposal that is being debated by the Romanian Parliament.
The goal of this sub-section is to translate in a easy – t o – understand format the complicated and abstract law proposals in the Romanian Parliament and to start a practical debate upon them, outside the Romanian Parliament.
The sub-section What are our MPs up to? will include information about the activity of the members of the Romanian Parliament, especially in their constituency.

What country will this operate in?: Romania

Who are you?:

E-Civis is an organization founded in June 2009 by the former Executive Director of Asociatia Pro Democratia, the largest and well known NGO in Romania.
The mission of the association E-Civis is to promote democratic values on a national and international level, mostly through the Internet.
The first program, since the foundation of the organization was Freemoldova, a communicational platform meant to promote the severe human rights violations that take place in the Republic of Moldova. The web site www.eliberatimoldova.eu is available in three languages, Romanian, English and Russian and the web site www.freemoldova.eu is redirecting visitors on the English version of www.eliberatimoldova.eu. These tools and the blogs that are also available on this subject are meant to raise awareness about what is happening in the Republic of Moldova and to stimulate citizens and authorities to take a stand against this situation.