At the end of the summer, the Institute for Rural Initiative (iRi) met with young people and facilitators from 10 rural communities – partners in the IntegrACT Alumni initiative. The project aims to help youth initiative groups to mobilize graduates from the country and abroad to solve a problem of young people in their community.
Despite the social distance and masks, the iRi team enjoyed discussing with participants from the 10 communities about innovative ways of implementing the project: promoting a new idea, creating partnerships, fundraising, creating dialogue platforms with local stakeholders, but also about previous editions of IntegrACT.
“The essence of the IntegrACT Alumni concept is the fact that current graduates mobilize former graduates in solving a youth problem in their community. Mobilizing the Diaspora graduates’ community began to be explored a few years ago, but I do not know why the graduates’ community from the country was forgotten… It is the first program of this type in our country through which we want to achieve a goal. We want to make the traditional graduates’ meetings with more efficient and with more impact.” – Ruslan Stanga, iRi executive director.
The participants talked about the classic methods of organizing graduates meetings in the community, which comes down to to festive events without a well-defined purpose. Within the IntegrACT Alumni program, the graduates’ meeting will be an opportunity to start a practical activity for the benefit of young people from their native village.
“The graduates’ meeting should be useful, as a solution to a community common problem. Through this project we learn how to mobilize them civically.” – Lauriana Strambanu, Nicoreni, Drochia district.
In the 10 partner schools, there will be developed new departments, meant to interact directly with the graduates’ community. The departments will be managed by young graduates in partnership with the school.
Within the session “Fundraising campaign: My village – my youth”, the participants learned various online and offline tools of attracting both local and external resources. iRi team presented a series of methods such as social platforms, web pages, face-to-face meetings, community announcements, Facebook pages, phone groups, collecting applications, as opportunities for graduates to donate money for community initiatives.
“When we ask for money, it is very important to create a story that arouses emotion and sends a credible message, to send a clear message showing the usefulness of the action for the community.” – Tatiana Costev, co-executive director, iRi.
“We do not ask for money, we offer graduates the possibility to contribute to changing things in the community.” – Ana Ciornaia, Maramonovca, Drochia district.
Returning to their communities, the representatives of the 10 partner communities, together with the initiative groups and local stakeholders, will work on rethinking the graduates’ meetings in their community. They will initiate a broad consultation process with young people and the school to achieve the project’s goal
The activity is part of the 2020 Grant Program for Youth Organizations of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research of the Republic of Moldova and implemented by the Institute for Rural Initiatives (iRi).
For more photos from the event, please visit the Facebook page of the Institute for Rural Initiatives (iRi):