ESC: V4Volunteering - short 2022

We are based in Baia Mare, a small town in the northern part of Romania. As the mining and its reprocessing industry has collapsed in the area starting with 2000, the town has lost its major income resources. As expected, the area’s economics decreased to the point where an important part of the population from this area has chosen to migrate to other cities of the country or even to go abroad. This resulted not only in a massive depopulation of the rural areas and a brain drain, but also a lot of children and youngsters were left at homes being raised by their grandparents or other relatives, as their parents went working in Europe. Slowly, the area started to increase economically as the production and services in commerce have appeared and developed in other branches, yet this situation has created a sensitive social context even in Baia Mare. Despite this aspect, Baia Mare enjoys the multiculturalism through the presence of Hungarians, Ukrainians, Roma, Jewish together with other cultural and religious minorities that have recently moved here, among Romanians. Yellow Shirts Association was established in 2010 from the will to sustain and help the young people to integrate in the community. Today, the organisation is led by young people as professional youth workers, which develop personalized activities for the beneficiaries, with the aim to help them develop in personal and professional terms. Yellow Shirts proposes activities with various profiles to help young people discover new cultures or ways to spend the free time in an enjoyable, yet useful way in different educational environments. Despite being a small association with no employees, the organisation is ran by 8 volunteers with different expertise and experiences on a permanent basis, to which other 8-10 volunteers join when there are short-term activities where their presence is needed. In terms of beneficiaries until now the organisation has involved more than 2000 youth in the over 200 international and national projects develop by Yellow Shirts or in partnership. The common topics of these meetings have been: entrepreneurship, volunteering and volunteers’ management, working with youth, youth organisations’ institutional management, environment’s protection, sustainable development, marketing policies, art, cultural identity, team building, project management, international partnership building activity in the youth field, gender equality, active citizenship and youth’s involvement in the community, leadership, social networks, the usage of internet for promoting the youth activities, and last, but not least, sports. Starting with 2013, the organisation is accredited to send and host young volunteers through European Voluntary Service, thus extending the level of volunteering inside Yellow Shirts from the local to the international one. The hosted volunteers have worked together with our team and the local volunteers to transform Baia Mare into a friendlier place and open to multiculturalism, through activities with and for the community youth. Starting with 2016, the association is trying to promote the concept of volunteering in sport events and promotion of sports and physical activities, be them international or local. So far our volunteers have taken part in sport events such as local and national competitions, European championships and other type of events, Olympic and Paralympics Games. Together with our volunteers, we are joining local matches from handball, volleyball and rugby as well as other competitions happening in town for taking sport photos of the events or support them with other aspects they may need. Starting with January 2018, Yellow Shirts has established a collaboration with Stiinta Explorari, a men volleyball club, in terms of preparing promotional materials, social media content, photos and videos during the matches and trainings and different materials and activities to promote sports in general and volleyball in particular as a grass root sport. Baia Mare has plenty of sport clubs both for amateurs and professionals, children and seniors. Although we do not have an official collaboration with these clubs, we often take pictures of the rugby or football matches, gymnastic, karate, badminton, swimming and so many other competitions that happen locally. We have a tight collaboration as well with the Maramures County Sport and Youth Department as well as with the National Sportive Complex “Lascar Pana” Baia Mare which are always supportive regarding activities implemented at the local level, be it related to sports, youth or both.