About CENTRAS Constantza

Regional Centre of Resources for Non-Governmental Organisations—CENTRAS Constantza was founded in 2001 and aims to be a support structure for the development of non-governmental and non-profit sector in the south-eastern Romania.

The organisation’s mission consists of:

• Encouraging civic spirit and involvement;
• Supporting the structural modernisation of the Romanian society and alignment to the contemporary debates on the third sector in Romania;
• Supporting the sustainable development of civil society and consolidation of participatory democracy in Romania;
• Promoting volunteering as a valuable form of youth participation.

In order to achieve this mission, we provide services such as:

1. Information and communication (library, databases, production of informational packages, monthly publication of the newsletter Partner), organising and supporting campaigns, providing supportive resources and access to communication and monitoring facilities, studies and research on the NGO sector;
2. Assistance/advice in the following fields: juridical,  financial-accounting, organisational management, project management, fundraising, image and communication,  drawing up funding proposals, and so on;
3.  Instruction/training in “Drawing up funding proposals”, “Project Management”, “Public communication campaigns”, “Conflict resolution”, “Team-building”, “Emotional intelligence”, “Negotiation and persuasive communication”, “Human Resources Management”, “Volunteer Management”, “Non-profit Marketing”, “Image and public relations”, “Communication and public campaigns”, “Organisational Management”, “Strategic planning”, “Fundraising” etc.);
4. Support for the activities and projects of NGOs;
5. Logistic support for the integration of the non-governmental sector, as well as for facilitating the relationship with the other sectors, in particular with the public administration.

One of our main strategic approaches is to promote volunteerism through our department, Constantza Volunteering Centre, which recruits more than 100 young volunteers each year.

The Volunteering Centre provides the following activities:

• Information and raising awareness campaigns with regard to the role and importance of volunteerism for the democratic development of our communities;
• Yearly recruiting campaigns of young volunteers, mainly in schools and universities;
• Training programmes for young volunteers in order to develop their skills to undertake actions in their communities;
• Placing trained volunteers in different organisations (both governmental and non-governmental);
• Promoting cooperation of young (volunteering) organisations all around Romania and Europe. (CENTRAS is a founding member of the European Federation for Mentoring and member of the Romanian Network of Volunteering Centres).

Most recent projects involving our young volunteers:

• "Mentoring peer to peer". 25 volunteers, aged 14 to 17, were trained as mentors for youngsters in orphanages. The goal of the mentoring peer to peer relationship was to support youngsters in orphanages to develop their self-motivation for integration into society;
• Volunteering, certification for employment. The goal of the project “Volunteering, certification for employment” was to promote an effective system of methods, instruments, procedures, validation rules to access the skills and competence acquired by the volunteer;
• The rural heritage, a business challenge for creative youngsters. In the context of poverty, lack of diverse educational offers, as well as lack of employment opportunities in rural areas, which lead to serious effects such as prompting youngsters to leave the rural communities and go to other countries further and further away, CENTRAS Constantza developed—with the financial support of the European Commission through Youth in Action Programme—a project for the development of creative and entrepreneurial skills of 45 youngsters, aged 15-18, from 3 rural communes of Constantza county.The project aimed to take advantage of both their personal resources and the rural heritage’s resources- the two essential prerequisites for durable rural development;
• "Mentoring for girls and young women". The European Federation for Mentoring is the main project result;
• "The Forum Vocation Caravan of the Young Volunteer". 20 young volunteers supported 155 youngsters in rural schools to identify their future professional orientation through volunteering activities in NGOs working in different fields (social services, environmental protection, human rights and community development);
•  "Forum Theatre". This is a method used by volunteers in order to promote the right values and behaviours among the community members with focus on the youngsters. The forum theatre is a play acted out in public spaces, which involves interaction with the public who have the possibility to stop a particular scene to make comments as well as to propose solutions. The topics were related to existing problems in the community such as discrimination of disabled people, domestic violence, violence in school and so on.

• "Volunteer Mentoring as an Efficient and Effective Adult Learning Strategy" -  Lessons Learned and Best Practice from the Romanian Experience. The workshop was a mobility action organised by CENTRAS Constantza within the Grundtvig Partnership Programme which involved staff, organisations and learners from Romania, Austria, UK, Estonia, Greece and Germany.The goal of this workshop was to promote volunteer mentoring  as an efficient and effective adult learning strategy. The seminar presented the mentoring approach of CENTRAS by using young volunteer mentors, and pointed out the differences and similarities between the mentoring system used by CENTRAS and other mentoring systems and practices.