Two community foundations that serve 3.5% of the Romanian population were created in Romania in the last 2 years. Cluj Community Foundation emerged in January 2008 and has in its list of successes projects that involve young people, schools and kindergartens, companies and individual donors.
Odorheiu Secuiesc Community Foundation, created in December 2007, develops projects that are meant to involve the citizens of Odorheiu Secuiesc in the life of their community.
In 2007, a theater troupe from the School for the Visually Impaired got on stage at the Miraje theater festival. The festival was one of the ideas proposed by high school students as part of the YouthBank Cluj program, a program that involves young people in the local community. This is just one of the 15 projects initiated by the young people from Cluj and supported through the YouthBank Fund. Other financed projects mobilized resources for disabled persons, promoted a healthier environment, organized cultural events or offered the young people from Cluj ways of spending their free time.
The YouthBank Fund (15.000 RON in the first year) was formed also with the help of young people aged 15-21, who carried out creative activities of fundraising. The amount of money they raised was tripled by BRD Groupe Société Générale. Some of the projects supported further generated new funds for the benefit of some categories of disabled people. The YouthBank Program is now at the fourth edition, with an anual fund of 33.000 RON, and continues to mobilize the energy and ideas of both young people from Cluj and adults that support them or benefit from these ideas.
Although YouthBank is the first program of Cluj Community Foundation, it illustrates very well the functioning principles of the Foundation: to involve people from the community both as beneficiaries and as participants and donors; to create a transparent support framework through which business companies and mass media can also be involved; to develop and multiply resources for the benefit of nonprofit activities in the community; to uphold new ideas that improve the quality of life of people living in Cluj.
At Odorheiu Secuiesc, corvee, an old custom that brings people together to work at a construction or gather the crops has revived in a way through which the community benefits. In 2008, with the help of a local paper and the City Hall, Odorheiu Secuiesc Community Foundation gathered over 120 local volunteers that restored children's play areas in four neighborhoods.
In 2009, the program continued to develop. The citizens were encouraged to express their ideas regarding urban planning, after which they restored the only area were sport can be practiced for free. The entire project was evaluated at 14.000 euros and 80 volunteers worked for it.
