Radio România Internațional

Tag: gift

  • At Pop Lazar’s, a charity shop AND a hub of good deeds

    At Pop Lazar’s, a charity shop AND a hub of good deeds

    We’re still early into 2025 and we’re bound to discover initiatives carried for the good of the communities, so we sat down and had a talk about a project highlighting the fact that each donation, each act of charity has contributed to putting a smile back on the faces of the downtrodden and to turning this world into a warmer place, into a place which is full of hope to a greater extent. Such a place has a name: At Pop Lazar’s Charity Shop.

    Inspired by the very popular profile of Bucharest in the late 19th and the early 20th century, Pop Lazar, a Jew who was into flea stuff trading, also drawing inspiration from the British concept of Charity Shop, a concept providing elegance to those frequenting its premises, the president of the Medical Association for Public Health, Elena Raluca Smuc Tănase, has initiated this project.

    At Pop Lazar’s is a charity shop and a project of the Medical Association for Public Health. The president of the Medical Association for Public Health and co-founder of the shop, Elena Raluca Smuc Tănase, told us all what it was all about.

    “It’s about Charity Shop a concept people abroad are all too familiar with. For instance, in England, the Red Cross has such a shop which is more than 100 years old and there also are big charity organizations initiating such projects in a bid to supplement their funds. As you know, streams of funding are provided by donations, fundraisers, abroad, or via shops of this kind.

    We thought of setting up such a shop in 2017, when we realized we received donations, objects we could not use at that time but which were in a very good condition and which, for us, could turn into a form of aid. People could donate brand new products, for us, or things in good condition, for instance clothes, household objects, books, China, jewels.

    They need to be in mint condition since we have not just as yet implemented a recycling system, for example, a tailor’s shop where we should repair things or recondition certain clothes and give then a new life. That is why, as we speak, we can only receive things in very good condition, clean, of course and without stains. “

    Although people want the project to be expanded, perhaps in a bid to set up a partnership with a drycleaners or a tailor’s, our guest today confessed that for the time being they did not have the capacity to set up yet another shop of the same kind, for instance.

    “It is a project requiring the continuous presence of the one who thought it out or who dreamed of it. It is a shop yet it is also a community hub, so there is a whole story behind this shop: it helps us raise the funding by means of which we can exist and carry our projects but it is a meeting place as well, a place where people have the opportunity to be generous, where people can…I don’t know…have a little conversation, it is a true community. And then, in a bid to maintain the spirit, for the time being we haven’t thought of setting up yet another shop with such a theme. “

    During holidays, At Pop Lazar’s reaches communities countrywide with aid, via the Children, Boots and Socks project. The president of the Medical Association for Public Health, Elena Raluca Smuc Tănase, gave us details on that:

    “It is a project I love and which has become one of our brands. It is a project we implemented in 2019 after a visit we paid to a community and which is strictly carried with the help of the charity shop’s friends. Meaning that people turn up as early as October and express their wish to support us in this project and they simply donate a pair of boots, a couple of pairs of socks as well as other beautiful things they put in a box they wrap nicely. For instance, we have succeeded to have more than 800 children countrywide.

    They are children from various regions, they are children coming from families or they are children from care centers or from village schools, we do not have a certain category in mind. We reach there where we have collaborators of where they call for help or there where we think we can get involved. It is a project I hold most dear!

    There are those months, those days when we meet again with friends of the shop, when we have a chat. For instance, you receive a child you help and that gift box becomes the reason why you meet his family or do some shopping together with the family or create a little cell at your workplace where several colleagues make a box or 10 boxes or 20 boxes. It is an extraordinary moment of human generosity and solidarity, generating a lot of confidence in us, whereby all that we do, we do it nicely and properly. “

    Another project provides donations of coloring pencils and coloring books, to be given away in hospitals. At Pop Lazar’s has grown into a space where people can find inspiration yet they can also feel they are part of a greater cause, a cause where the good has its well-established place.

  • ‘The Christmas Gift’ singled out for the Oscars

    ‘The Christmas Gift’ singled out for the Oscars

    Director Bogdan Mureșanus film ‘The Christmas Gift has been short-listed for the Oscar 2020 Awards. At present, only 10 of the 191 registered shorts have been left in the competition. The final list with 5 nominations will be announced on January 13, 2020, following the votes cast by the members of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences specialized in short films.



    In early December, Bogdan Mureșanus film ‘The Christmas Gift received a prize from the European Film Academy – EFA. His movie has actually won many international prizes among which the Grand Prize of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the prize of the Days of Romanian film at the Transylvania International Film Festival TIFF, the Grand Prize of the short film contest of the Cottbus Film Festival and a special mention at the Montpellier Festival.



    The films action is set on the evening of December 20, 1989 and the plot starts from the letter a small boy wrote to Santa Claus, in which he reveals what his parents wish for Christmas. His father discovers, horrified, that his son had written in the letter that his fathers wish was to see Ceausescu dead. One of Bogdan Mureșanus intentions was to turn the film ‘The Christmas Gift into a black comedy:



    Bogdan Mureșanu: “I strained myself trying to achieve that, trying to turn the story into a black comedy. It seems that I managed to do that. Because my film was selected for many festivals of the world and I noticed that, in spite of cultural differences, people are quite amused when watching the film. At first I was really astonished to see that those people did understand the nuances of the dialogue. When I was editing the film, I was afraid that viewers from other countries might not grasp all the hints and allusions in the film. I thought they might find it difficult to understand who uncle Nicu was, how one could be afraid of ones own neighbor, how one could suspect ones spouse, and so on. I was afraid the film would be understood only by viewers from the eastern countries, who had that experience first hand. I was happy to see that the film was selected at a number of festivals, that the message of the film was grasped by the members of the jury. And I was happy to see that what I perceived as local language proved to be universal language.



    Bogdan Mureșanu confessed that the film was a Christmas present that he received earlier. At the awards gala in Berlin, when he was awarded the prize of the European Film Academy, he said his real joy was to be together with some of the people he loved and admired.



    Set up in 1988, the European Film Academy gathers more than 3,600 professionals form the filmmaking industry and its aims is to promote the European film. The EFA awards galas are held every 2 years in Germanys capital, and, in the other years, in various European cities. The winners are designated following the vote of the more than 3,600 members of the European Film Academy. Here is Bogdan Mureșanu with impressions on the prize his film received:



    Bogdan Mureșanu: “It is an honor for me, because the EFA is made up of professionals who watch lots of movies and who are up to date with the latest films. I know many of these professionals, directors, actors, screenwriters, and I was aware of their impressions about the film. At the awards gala, I shook hands with Wim Wenders, a director whom I admire a lot and who told me he liked the film. I also talked to another cinema star, Werner Herzog, so, for me the awards gala was something magical.



    Next Bogdan Mureșanu spoke about the feedback his film received:



    Bogdan Mureșanu: “As I have already said, I first thought that the film would resonate with the people in the eastern bloc, and I did not expect that the movie would be so much appreciated. This means that there is something universal about this story, it is not just something local. People have identified in the film aspects that go beyond that historical moment of December 1989. I was happy to see that the film was well received in America too. You can never anticipate such things.



    The cast of ‘The Christmas gift includes Andrei Văncică, Ioana Flora and the child Luca Toma.


    (translated by: Lacramioara Simion)