OUR WORK IN ROMANIA

“We do not strive for spectacular actions. What counts is the gift of yourself, the degree of love you put into each of your deeds.” Mother Teresa

Since ARPGE's incorporation, we have been active in Romania to work against gender-based violence. ARPGE has helped support several projects, forging dynamic partnerships with non-profit organizations committed to working on gender issues.

• Girls Leading Our World...Raising Awareness through Strength
In August of 2006, ARPGE worked with the Association for Gender Equality and Liberty (ALEG), based in Sibiu, Romania, to host fifteen girls for a five-day Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) camp in the mountains of southern Transylvania . For five days, these young women of different races and from across the socio-economic spectrum participated in workshops on gender equality issues - gender stereotypes, body image and eating disorders, healthy relationships, abuse prevention, assertive communication, self-defense, reproductive health, career planning, and community involvement – moderated by both teen and adult members of ALEG. GLOW camps were originally conceived and piloted in 1995 by Peace Corps volunteers in Romania. The continuation of this tradition by Romanian women’s NGOs is a satisfying demonstration of the sustainability of this Peace Corps-initiated project.

• Silent Witnesses Communicate Powerful Messages
This fall ARPGE funded part of the fourth-annual ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence’ campaign launched in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, by the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR). The 16 Days campaign is a yearly, worldwide campaign that runs from November 25th (International Day Against Violence Against Women) to December 10th (International Human Rights Day). PATRIR uses this campaign as a springboard to raise awareness in Cluj about violence against women. This year, PATRIR held events for each day of the 16-day campaign, including a photo exhibition, round-table discussion groups, teach-ins, mock-courts, a ‘women’s rights are human rights’ street festival, and other consciousness-raising activities. ARPGE sponsored in particular the Silent Witnesses event, which began the campaign. Life-sized, red cardboard cutouts of women were placed throughout the city, each bearing an anonymous local survivor’s story of domestic violence. The same day, PATRIR volunteers were on the streets and riding buses distributing brochures with information on domestic violence in Romania and numbers of hotlines and shelters available to women.

• "A Peace Corps Volunteer's Work is Never Done", August 2006
ARPGE president Becka Fergusson-Lutz traveled to Romania in August of 2006, more than three years after the end of her Peace Corps service, to work at a Youth for Positive Change camp in the beautiful Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania for approximately 35 young activists from around the world: the Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia, Mexico, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Australia, Romania, the Republic of Moldova, the UK, and the US. The camp, organized by the Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR), offered a ‘crash course’ in grassroots organizing and peace-making. Becka, along with friend and former co-worker Camelia Blaga, the president and founder of the Association for Liberty and Gender Equality (ALEG) in Sibiu, presented trainings on healthy relationships, human trafficking, and gender and the media’s depiction of it.

ARPGE’s founding members, before they came together to create this organization, had extensive experience with gender-related issues in Romania. Below is a description of the some of the projects that contributed to the vision of ARPGE.

• True love = Mutual Respect
“V-Day” campaign, Sibiu, February 2002
The seeds of the grassroots “V-Day” movement were sown in Sibiu by Becka Fergusson-Lutz and her Romanian colleagues Calin and Camelia Blaga in February 2002. The “V-Day” campaign has become a fixture in university campuses across the United States, capitalizing on Valentine’s Day to raise awareness about violence against women. The pioneers of the campaign wanted Valentine’s Day to become a time not only to celebrate love but also to discuss the detrimental effects of abusive relationships and the ill treatment of women in society. The month-long campaign in Sibiu featured more than 30 seminars about violence against women given in five high schools and three colleges.

• Building Bridges across the AIDS Gap
Capacity-building conference, Iasi, Romania June 2002
Stephanie Paul secured funding through Peace Corps and the United States Agency for International Development to sponsor a conference in June 2002 in Iasi for government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and those afflicted with HIV/AIDS. The goal was to provide an opportunity for participants to network, exchange ideas, and build their capacity to better serve those impacted by HIV/AIDS.

• Girl Power!
Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) Camps, Summer 2002 and 2003
GLOW, or Girls Leading Our World, camps were created by Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Romania in the mid-1990s. The goal of GLOW camps is to empower young women to rise above their status as second-class citizens and be the arbiters of change in their society. Through these all-expenses-paid "girl power vacations," young women learn about eating disorders, domestic violence, sexual harassment, substance abuse, responsible sexual activity, and other taboo subjects that teenage girls need to know about but are rarely taught in school or at home. The GLOW concept has spread throughout the Peace Corps world in the past decade and camps are now implemented in dozens of the 70-plus countries where Peace Corps Volunteers serve.

Becka Fergusson-Lutz, working with four other Peace Corps Volunteers and a
young Romanian woman, organized a week-long GLOW camp held in late
June-early July 2002 in Cisnadioara, a small village in Sibiu County. While
following the basic structure of previous GLOW camps, this particular camp
also placed strong emphasis on creative expression and the arts. In July
2002, Karen Larson and five fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, with the help of
a Romanian environmental organization, coordinated a week-long GLOW camp in
Suncuius, a village in the mountains of Transylvania, for 30 young women.
The camp followed the GLOW format but was augmented with outdoor activities
such as hiking, caving, rock climbing, and rappelling. The following summer
Karen and her Peace Corps colleagues partnered with Outward Bound Romania to
create a four-day camp that incorporated Outward Bound activities like
hiking, scavenger hunts, and ropes courses with GLOW ideals.

• Creating men of character
Teaching Boys to Excel camp, Petrosani, July 2002
As with GLOW camps, Peace Corps Romania paved the way with the Teaching Our Boys to Excel (TOBE) camp model, holding the first camp in July 2002 in the mountains near Petrosani, a mining city in southwestern Romania. Becka Fergusson-Lutz worked on a team of nine Peace Corps Volunteers to bring 31 boys from across Romania together for a week to reflect on some of the country’s most pressing problems and brainstorm tangible solutions. The focus of the camp was not empowerment (as is the case with GLOW) but rather channeling and sublimating; boys already have a privileged position in Romanian society. The counselors tried to redefine masculinity; illustrate the importance of positive, proactive leadership; and encourage teamwork and personal responsibility.

• The Real War on Terror
Rape and Sexual Assault Awareness Conference, Sibiu, September 2002
Peace Corps Romania’s Gender and Development (GAD) committee, with funding from the Peace Corps Center for Field Assistance and Applied Research in Washington, D.C., hosted a symposium on rape and sexual assault in Sibiu in September 2002. Teams of professionals (psychologists, social workers, journalists, police officers, NGO advocates, and lawyers) from eleven communities across the country came together to learn practical tools for affecting grassroots change in the area of rape and sexual assault prevention. Seminars led by Calin and Camelia Blaga, Becka Fergusson-Lutz and other Peace Corps Volunteers and translated by George Cernat focused on the media’s presentation of rapists and rape victims, the legal challenges of holding rapists accountable, successful lobbying, and the tenets of grassroots organizing.

• Shining Light in the Darkness
AIDS Day memorial observance, Iasi, December 2002
Stephanie Paul coordinated Iasi’s first annual AIDS Day memorial observance with the local branch of the anti-AIDS foundation in December 2002. This public event highlighted the disease’s impact on the community’s youth and provided educational materials to the public. The event was sponsored by the local public health department and was attended by hundreds of passers-by.

• Bright Ideas Illuminate Sibiu
“Bright Ideas” educational campaign, Sibiu, Spring 2003
After the “V-Day Sibiu 2002” campaign, the need for a comprehensive awareness campaign on gender issues was evident; students had been asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire, the results of which were alarming. It was blatantly clear that the problems of sexual assault and harassment and intimate partner violence were much more serious than anyone had imagined. With the financial support of Peace Corps Romania and the United States Agency for International Development, Camelia and Calin Blaga and Becka Fergusson-Lutz created a 30-page booklet on gender issues titled “Idei Stralucite,” or “Bright Ideas.”

One of the implicit goals of the project was empower young Romanian men and women to facilitate change in their own communities. For the booklet to achieve its maximum effect, the material needed vibrant, savvy young people to bring it to life and to stand as role models for the high-schoolers. As such, Becka, Calin, and Camelia recruited student volunteers from the Lucian Blaga University to give presentations in ninth-grade homeroom classes across the city. These 25 male and female volunteers showed keen interest in working with teenagers to combat these dangerous and regressive mentalities.

• Pounding the pavement
Martisor/International Women’s Day march, Sibiu, March 2003
March is prime time for feminist uprisings in Romania! March 1 is “Martisor,” traditionally regarded at the first day of spring in Romania. On this day, women receive little baubles, usually a gold charm like a horseshoe or a flower, tied with red and white ribbon. (No one really knows how or when this tradition started but red is believed to represent love and life and white purity, and these gifts are given to women because they are living symbols of fertility.) March 8 is International Women’s Day, which is celebrated in numerous other Eastern European countries and came into popularity during Communist times.

To mark these two holidays, Calin Blaga and Becka Fergusson-Lutz organized Sibiu’s first protest march on gender issues. They bought a huge piece of white fabric (about 50 feet long), on which they wrote, “Every Day is Women’s Day!” and “Break the Silence: Violence Against Women Cannot Be Tolerated.” About 30 women, the majority of them young, “wore” the banner as they walked around town. Thousands of people stopped and stared as they walked through town — which was exactly what the organizers wanted. Male and female high school and university students passed out flyers and answered the questions of curious passers-by. In the course of 15 minutes, almost all of the 900 flyers were distributed!

In Lugoj, Karen Larson helped organize a domestic violence awareness campaign utilizing the slogan “These Hands Don’t Hurt.” High school students passed out purple ribbons and informational pamphlets in the town center and asked people to sign petitions denouncing domestic violence. People were also encouraged to trace their hands on several large posters that contained the words “These Hands Won’t Hurt.” Local businesses displayed these posters in their shop windows for months after the event.

These actions were part of a nationwide campaign coordinated by Stephanie Paul involving over 30 Peace Corps Volunteers in 14 cities and reaching tens of thousands of Romanians through community activities and public education. In the fall of 2003, Stephanie co-chaired another anti-domestic violence campaign held in over 25 cities with nearly 50 Peace Corps Volunteers participating.

• Duty, Honor, and Country
Presentation at the Romanian Ground Forces Academy, Sibiu, March 2003
George Cernat, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a former student at the Ground Forces Academy in Sibiu (West Point’s Romanian equivalent), used his years of experience in the military to address gender equality problems in the Romanian army at a school-wide seminar for cadets and officers in March 2003.

The Romanian military academies began accepting female cadets only in recent years. By not admitting women as enlisted soldiers and not requiring mandatory military service for all young women (as is required of all young men), the Romanian military has implicitly stated that women are “the weaker sex.” There is no inherent respect of women operating in “a man’s world” like the army. Soldiers and officers of all ranks must be educated to respect female officers as officers first and women second.

George and Calin Blaga also seized the opportunity to teach about rape, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence, as studies done worldwide consistently show high instances of these dangerous and illegal behaviors by military personnel.

• A Brand New Day
Saint Mary shelter opening, Botosani, Spring 2003
John and Kathy Baker were catalysts in the move to establish the Sfantul Maria (Saint Mary) shelter for victims of domestic abuse, the first one ever in Botosani, Romania’s northeastern-most county. Pivotal start-up funds were raised by the Bakers through the Peace Corps Partnership Program. The shelter opened in the spring of 2003 and continues to operate effectively under the management of an advisory board of community officials and advocates.

• Training Day
Project Design and Management Workshop, Predeal, June 2003
Karen Larson was a member of a six-person team that presented a two-day workshop on gender-sensitive project design and management that was attended by more than 20 men and women from across Romania.

• The Reality can be Different
Human Trafficking Prevention Campaign, Moldova, September and October 2003
Faced with few, if any, meaningful job prospects and a grim economic future, thousands of young Romanian women seek work and/or education abroad. Experts estimate that nearly 2,000 women are trafficked from Romania annually. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 50 percent of those women are from one of the seven counties that make up the Moldovan region, Romania’s poorest area.

Stephanie Paul and her fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Jason Maddix co-authored Moldova’s first anti-trafficking public education program, entitled “The Reality Can Be Different.” The 45-day campaign employed 17 NGO staff and sponsored nearly 300 volunteers who passed out 64,406 pieces of educational material. Stephanie and Jason produced television and radio public service announcements that aired 582 times over the Moldavian airwaves. They estimate that approximately 3,228,881 people from the Moldavian region — nearly two-thirds of the region’s population — heard the message at least once.

Besides being principal architects in the design and production of the grant, Stephanie and Jason established a human trafficking prevention division within Asociatia Alternative Sociale (AAS), a Iasi-based non-governmental organization, to administer the grant. The campaign headquarters at the AAS maintains Romania’s only toll-free helpline, where over 1,500 calls were received in just the six weeks of the campaign.

Stephanie and Jason also established and administered Romania’s only regional coalition to prevent human trafficking. The coalition, which covers eight counties in the eastern region of Romania, is a partnership of non-governmental organizations, law enforcement, customs officials, representatives from the youth and education ministries, and other public officials.

But that’s only the beginning . . .
With your financial and moral support, we at ARPGE can do much more in our quest to curb intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, homophobia, and gender discrimination in Romanian society. Click here for information on how you can contribute.