Radio România Internațional

Tag: civic

  • How we can educate children for their civic involvement

    How we can educate children for their civic involvement

    Since 2014, the 11even Association
    has been annually staging the ‘Creators of Future’ camp as part of a
    programme targeting students with educational performances who may also want to
    get involved civically. Since its first edition, less significant in terms of
    participants and, until recently, for the 2023 edition of the camp, ‘Creators
    of Future’ has been gaining ground, yet several aspects have remained constant:
    50 high-schoolers are selected annually from the winners in various national
    and international Olympiads to spend a week, as part of a summer school where
    they are being challenged by experts in an attempt to make them bring something
    new to society. The camp is located near Cluj-Napoca, and the selection
    criteria takes into account the students’ interests and abilities in certain
    fields of activity, as Tudor Vasiliu, the initiator of the aforementioned
    programme has told us.

    Tudor Vasiliu:

    We have four application domains: one is educational,
    focusing on everything related to school events, such as Olympiads, national
    and international school contests. Then there is a second one, which is the
    sports domain, where we are focusing on sports performances. Then there is the
    cultural domain, which comprises everything related to performance in art and
    culture and I am talking here about high-school students who may have written a
    book, who are painting or have obtained good results in art contests. Last but
    not least is the field of school leadership, which is targeting the students
    involved in various volunteering activities and are doing great things for
    society.

    The underlying idea for this
    initiative was that the young people with performances in education are also most
    capable of obtaining civic performances.

    Tudor
    Vasiliu:

    We are trying to offer them as many
    prospects as possible in a large number of domains through our invitees. We are
    trying to invite people who have studied or who achieved success abroad and
    then returned to Romania to bring their contribution and make a change here.
    Looking back now, out of roughly 900 high-school students who have participated
    in our programme along the years, I believe that 50%-60% are studying or have
    studied in prestigious universities abroad. And somehow, we are trying to bring
    these young people back to Romania on medium and long term. We are encouraging
    them to study abroad if they believe this will contribute to their professional
    development. But we underline the need for them to come back to Romania and
    make a change here as well.

    Adding
    to that, here are a few examples of topics and guests that were seminal for the
    September 2023 edition of the Creators of Future camp.

    Tudor Vasiliu:

    We had a wide range of topics for
    debate. For instance, we invited Mihnea Măruță, a journalist
    and the author of a recently-released volume focusing on digital identity, on
    how this aspect takes its toll on our being, and on how we relate to the social
    networks. We also invited Codruța Simina, a journalist focusing on the topic of
    disinformation and that of the fake news. We also invited Răzvan Petri, and MA
    student at King’s College in England who is working on a very interesting
    project in Romania, basically targeting teenagers and dealing with politics.
    With him too, we had a debate on the usefulness of politics and on how those
    youngsters relate to the political sphere. We also invited the physician Mihai
    Copăceanu, who organized a debate on drugs, we also invited the rector of Babeș-Bolyai
    University, Daniel David, who gave a talk on the new Romania. We staged a
    seminar offered by Răzvan Cherecheș, focusing on innovation since he is a
    Public Health professor with the University in Cluj-Napoca and we also had two
    guests who are active on Tik-Tok, yet they try to generate a change for the
    better, conveying a positive message on this platform. One of them is a legal
    educator, the other one has developed his own business using this platform.

    Although
    youngsters are sometimes perceived as being indifferent to political and civic
    involvement, the high school students who convened as part of the Creators of Future program have invalidated such an opinion.

    Tudor Vasiliu:

    Their desire to get involved is a very strong one. Actually,
    after every edition we in turn seek to get them involved, throughout the
    schoolyear, in various activities. As regards politics, they may not be that
    keen ion that, at their age. However, when it comes to civic involvement, they
    really are anxious to get involved there. We even had, as part of the previous
    editions, contests on projects that were subsequently financed and implemented.
    As an outcome of this year’s edition as well, we want that, together with some
    of them, we want to stage, in their communities of origin, several small-scale
    events so they can invite guests who dares them to change, at once bringing
    those people begore a younger audience.

    Moreover,
    Tudor Vasiliu also noticed that, among other things, Romania’s high-school
    students are interested in how they can study abroad, they are also interested
    in the online ideas and contents and, last but not the least, they also have
    ecological preoccupations.




  • Romanians and their food habits

    Romanians and their food habits


    Food waste is one of the most worrying aftermaths of
    today’s consumerism, and Romania is not spared that scourge either. Food waste
    has become really troublesome so much so that in 2016 a bill was passed to
    fight food waste. Unfortunately, the implementation standards of the law are
    yet to be completed. Big quantities of food are being thrown in the litter bin
    by the Romanians, according to recent estimates. Such quantities are large
    enough to load more than 120,000 trucks each year. Food costs account for 40%
    of Romanians’ incomes, but unfortunately, 35 to 40% of the food ends in the
    litter bin. Clearer and more recent pieces of information have recently been
    made public thanks to a sociological survey carried in the summer and autumn of
    2020 by Cluj-Napoca’s University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary
    medicine, as part of an international project financed by the Francophone
    University Agency. The research focused on three countries, Romania, Republic
    of Moldova and Northern Macedonia. The results were not that much different
    from one country to the next, of the three aforementioned states. For instance,
    taking food habits into account, the vast majority of the respondents stated
    they more often than not made a shopping list, which speaks about prudence and
    precaution. Also, around 90% of respondents said they usually cooked at home,
    which, at least in theory, meant a lower degree of degradation for the food,
    since it was cooked as fresh as possible. However, the study carried by the
    university in Cluj only confirms earlier estimates on food waste in Romania. Cristina Pocol is the coordinator of the research team:

    Irrespective of their country of
    origin, respondents said they throw food away. 83% of Romanian respondents said
    that. A similar answer was provided by 78.8% of the respondents from Republic
    of Moldova, as well as by 67.2% respondents in Northern Macedonia. There are
    quite a few habits related to food waste. We wanted to find our whether
    respondents checked the expiry date of a certain food produce. Most of them
    said they never failed to do that each time they took their consumer’s
    decision. Then most of the respondents are very particular about the way they
    store their food, where and how they do that. And are somehow interested in
    avoiding food waste. Practically, it was very interesting for us to find out
    that, when asked how interested they were in avoiding the waste of food, for
    their most part they said they were very interested, and that it was a topic
    they really cared about. But that comes in stark contrast with their behavior.
    Okay, they are interested in the topic of food waste, but they throw food away.
    These two things just don’t add up. They do no know how to curb waste, they do
    not have the required methods to do that, meaning that for them, education to
    that end is in short supply. Let me just say that once again, most of them
    throw food away. Most of them are interested in the topic of food waste.
    However, we notice such a contradiction did exist. And the explanation I found
    for that was that they try, and have that in mind, but they do not put that
    into practice. They do not put that into practice for several reasons: they may
    have tried and failed in their efforts, and when it comes to that, we also need
    to see the reason why they failed.


    Also, according to the respondents of the survey,
    those who waste most of the food are the restaurants and the individual
    consumers, while economic operators come in third, especially the supermarkets
    where people mainly make their purchase. Cristina Pocol:


    We had a question related to the
    buying habits. We still noticed a behavior pattern which practically comes a s
    no surprise for us. For their most part, people do their shopping from the
    supermarket and the hypermarket. Very few people for the time being, opt for
    the small traders, for the short supply circuits. Most of them resort to the
    hypermarkets, and then they go to the marketplace. Very few of them use the
    short circuits or value the producer’s direct relationship with the consumer,
    which is very important in various respects. Actually, the retail gives you the
    opportunity to consume fresh and genuine products, Romanian products. So I
    believe there’s a lot more work to do when it comes to that, meaning we also
    need to carry education campaigns to that end. Nonetheless, it would be better
    to raise the consumers’ awareness on the importance of buying local.


    The sanitary crisis triggered by the COVID-19 virus
    did not change the buying habits in Romanian and Republic of Moldova. About two
    thirds of the respondents stated they could buy the same quantity of food with
    the same money. However, a change does exist, which occurred during the
    pandemic, but it was not the one we expected. Cristina Pocol:


    The crisis triggered by the
    COVID-19 virus prompted more than 10% of the respondents to throw more food
    away. I expected a totally different result. In my mind, the following
    mechanism was working: I thought that, since we had the lockdown, we were more
    careful about what we eat, how we eat and how we plan our shopping. That is why
    started off from the assumption whereby such a thing would have food waste
    reduction as a result. The outcome of the study has revealed otherwise. 10% of
    the respondents say they throw more during the pandemic. I tried to find
    explanations to that. Much larger stocks may have been made. That could be the
    main explanation. We all know what happened at the beginning of the sanitary
    crisis, when people went wild buying boxes of food, they bought food in very
    large quantities for fear they would be deprived of food supplies. That could
    be an explanation. That food could not be consumed straight away and in a
    relatively short period of time. So, part of it was disposed of. I believe the
    clear explanation for all that is the fact that, eventually, too much storage
    of food lead to waste.


    Meanwhile, some of the economic operators and civic
    associations stage awareness-raising campaigns for a within-bounds consumption
    rate and for the fated consequences food waste has on the economy as well as on
    the environment. InfoCons is an NGO that has staged such a campaign targeting
    the economic costs of food waste. Sorin
    Mierlea is the president of InfoCons. He believes that, if emphasis is laid on
    economic loss, the message for fighting food waste is easier to reach the
    public. Sorin Mierlea:


    First off, when we speak about food
    waste it is not the problematics we discuss, but we also need to consider the
    money we pay each time we buy food products that end in the litter bin
    afterwards. That kind of cost means hours of work while those hours of work
    eventually mean the life of every one of us. In another move, I believe that
    each and every one of us, in our capacity as consumers, need to have all the
    data and the info lest we have no choice other than saying we did not know
    anything about it. Therefore, InfoCons, jointly with other entities in other
    countries, since this it’s a cross-border project, has set out to raise the
    public opinion’s but also the public authorities’ awareness on the impact food waste may have.


    Held in schools, during the homeroom classes, also using digital resources, the InfoCons campaign offers the required tools so that the prospective consumers may be correctly informed on food waste.

    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)