What is happening in our partner region in these days of autumn? Székely Land is a part of Transylvania in Romania and is a mountainous region rich of traditions. Around 580 thousand szekler people living in Harghita, Covasna, and parts of Mureș counties. They have many institutions who organise projects for young, middle-aged and elderly people.

8 international volunteers from different countries

Starting from September 2020 in Cristuru Secuiesc, Romania hosts 8 volunteers from different countries, like Ireland, UK, Germany, Slovakia and Lithuania. They are working on different projects, like environmental education in the school, kindergarten activities and knowledge with herbs. The Herbalism project aims to promote the harvest of local plants to produce oils, soaps, syrups and other cosmetic and medicinal products. The project aims to encourage the local producers that there is still an interest and demand for these products.

Local volunteers

As well in Cristuru Secuiesc there is a local high school volunteering team, that organizes events mainly for their peers, like students’ day or freshmen’s ball. They are part Generation Z and enjoy organizing events for young people, but sometimes the communication is more difficult when it comes to dealing with other generations, and this is why the next project helps out.

Emotional Management: Tool to Fight Social Media Dependency

Nowadays on the social media everybody seems to be happy, beautiful, rich and perfect. That has a negative impact on the development of young people. In the EMOTIONAL MANAGEMENT project the local youth association A.T.A is part of a Strategic Partnerships for School Education in which are also cooperating an other NGO and the local governments and  secondary schools from Spain, Portugal and Romania. Research is undertaken between October, 2019 and October, 2021, and the goal is to create a training for teachers and parents, that helps to realize the youngster false self-image and how to improve natural self-image.

There is a lot going on! It is only small part of project of A.T.A in Székely Land. If you are interested you can visit the webpage  http://ata-ro.eu/ or the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ata.ong.

* Máté Anita, ESC volunteer in Tramonti, passionate about conscious living