Description
In Romania the involvement of citizens in their communities is extremely low, with few people supporting NGOs, doing voluntary work or contributing to the civic life. The objective of the project is to increase civic engagement using a mapping system of local needs available both online and as a mobile application. Citizens are directly involved in addressing social needs, supported by NGOs. The map will have as results 500 social needs signaled by community members, 300 interconnected platform users, 10 local initiative groups. The beneficiaries will be at least 500 active people, which will be more focused on the needs and social issues in their communities, more involved and willing to generate change. The communities and the NGOs will benefit indirectly, as the "I care map" will lead to an overall citizens engagement.
Summary of project results
The purpose of the "I Care Map" project was to increase civic engagement using an online mapping system of local needs. Citizens were encouraged to directly get involved in addressing social needs, supported by NGOs all over Romania. The project started from the issue that citizens’ engagement in the country is scarce and there are no real options for them to get involved in civil/community matters all the time. Between 1 October 2014 and 29 February 2016, the main achievement of the project was the creation of the web platform and the mobile application
http://icaremap.ro. With the help of this application the organization has managed to create an easy tool for any citizen who wants to create change in his/her community. The application gets together citizens that identify specific problems in the community and map them online and NGOs that can help solving this specific problems, depending on their expertize. The project has created the platform for bringing together citizens and NGOs in order to support and solve community problems. Any citizen, with the help of the application, has the opportunity to track the state of the problem he/she is involved in, without feeling that the civic involvement efforts remain unsolved. In order to increase civic involvement, community training and mentoring programs on community development and problem solving were organized in 10 communities. Within these trainings, the community development specialist approached themes such as: legal provisions, the relationship between the citizen and the local authority, forms of citizens' organization, public policies, the use of the online platform and the application. The trainer was a person with work experience in the NGO environment and who has been involved in organizing and community development activities. Following the trainings, 10 local initiative groups were developed. For problem solving, meetings were held with local authorities to discuss the problems encountered and the solutions that these groups thought, and the local authority would support the solutions or possibly come up with more beneficial ones.
Summary of bilateral results