Update

Greetings Friends,
Alecia and I have now officially finished Peace Corps and so thought it might be time to fill you all in on the big ‘what’s next?’ Alecia and I have decided to stay in this beautiful part of the world for at least 3 more years. Alecia is working on a small company that will collect, dry and export the region’s delicious natural bounty (i.e. wild blueberries, mushrooms, sea buckthorn etc…). She and her business partner were lucky to find a used industrial scale drier which they acquired for the low low price of “take it out of my backyard and it is yours.” They have been working on fixing it up and testing blueberries which are plentiful at this time of year. So far they have had measured success (which means they figured out a lot of what was not working and had some inedible berries out of the deal) but they are confident that the next batch will be good enough to start sending samples to buyers. Then a few trade shows this winter and hopefully by the time next year’s harvest comes around they will be ready to go.

In the meantime, Alecia has also been editing a book of short stories written by a returned peace corps volunteer and doing some writing of her own. Her literary forays have taken wing as a series of articles on conscientious consumerism and are being published every couple of weeks in the newspaper. The idea is to try to contribute to the preservation of the local farmers markets here as big box (mostly German) hypermarkets start popping up. Interestingly enough, Romanians are really interested in natural, healthy foods and are very proud of their quality produce. Most of the food one can buy is labeled preservative free (dubious) and given the choice, most folks here would rather have it that way (they brag endlessly about the Romanian tomato). And they still can. The markets are beautiful and thriving, filled with local produce and delicious seasonal variety that we used to pay through the nose for in the states. It is cheaper than the stuff you get in the hyper market and fresh. Paradoxically, this region’s recent history of basic starvation under communism and the exploding personal wealth in recent years, have led to the creation of the ‘shopper.’ People want to try new things and explore a big box store even if they can taste the difference between fresh and local and frozen and international. They want to park in the big lot and be seen. And really, they should have that right. There are great conversations when someone calls Alecia and asks what to do with an avocado. So, as this duality evolves, Alecia will keep writing and encouraging folks to at least think about where their chops come from and what the real costs of a kilo of carrots might be when they come from France…

I have been doing some writing as well. Mostly articles about the growing community foundation (CF) movement in Romania, for which I am spokesman in my role as ‘senior consultant’ to the national program for developing CFs. At the moment my colleagues on the national program and I are trying to develop a system to support CF development which is tricky business when CFs are theoretically an organic reaction to local needs. Planting seeds and providing a framework without getting too controlling… and Alecia thought having a dog was going to be good training for kids.

On the local front, the foundation I started, the Odorheiu Secuiesc Community Foundation (www.szka.org) is growing nicely. My first full time employee and I have been working to build our name in the community and create an understanding about what we are here to do. Our ‘vision’ is: “To be a comprehensive center for philanthropy serving a society of socially conscious, philanthropic individuals who hold themselves responsible for the improvement of our community and who motivate a balanced, respectful and mutually beneficial collaboration between the business, government and non-profit sectors.” Quite a mouthful (good thing I have a big mouth?)

What this means in a lot of ways is we are trying to inspire people to invest time or resources in improving our community. Sometimes this is simple work like an educational campaign ‘chip bag missed the public trash can? Try try again…” Sometimes it is more complex like bringing together different sectors that might not trust each other, working with businesses who want to develop better employee relations through volunteering or sponsorship, or encouraging the growing middle and upper classes to use dome of their new found wealth in ways that take our community forward. The nice thing is that as a community foundation we can work on local needs that are really local needs. There is a lot of money coming from Brussels right now through the E.U. that presumes to know what is needed here. That money is often nearly inaccessible and frequently misses the point (for examples feel free to write, I like to rant on this one…). While we may never give away the millions of dollars Brussels does, if we can get local citizens involved in seeing and solving problems they determine then we may not need to. Another way of looking at it is that we are providing the little building blocks and forging trusting connections that will be necessary if those big grants are ever to work and not simply get stolen as often happens with E.U. money (this is not a problem unique to Romania). So, big goals, big dreams, good cause…

And how was peace corps? Funny, this question keeps coming up. On the whole positive. Ups and downs of course. Something that became a big story during our time here is ‘what is the role of peace corps?’ An ex country director published several big op-eds saying peace corps was failing because it was sending under trained, un-skilled young folk around the world to work in development. One of his points was something along the lines of ‘what would you expect an Iowa hog farmer to gain from a fresh college graduate from Senegal who had never been on a pig farm?’ Not much probably if you are looking at this as a totally development focused organization. However, something he seems to have missed in his years with the Corps is that goals 2 and 3 of the 3 goals in peace corps are all about cultural exchange. I can believe that the average Iowa hog farmer might learn a hell of a lot from having a Senegalese individual to work with for a couple of years. And unless anyone thing I am coming down on Iowa hog farmers in any way, as a disclaimer, my mother is from Iowa.

I think in a lot of ways our peace corps experience bore similarities to the hog farming example. Alecia and I may have had a lot more to offer than a fresh graduate (at least we knew that nothing was going to come to us free and easy…) but if you look at technical things there is not much we could offer that the averagely motivated might not discover for themselves. When it comes to how we look at the world and work for what we believe in we may have opened some eyes. We certainly learned a lot. I am more patient now (usually) and have grown as a manager (I like to think anyway). Time will tell. And there are always new and exciting things here. For instance, the other day we had a BBQ and our guest who was supposed to bring refreshments had not found an open store along the way over. So he gets here, asks what people want, and calls the cab company to deliver. This is amazing to me. You pay the fare and the cost of the product and they will bring whatever you want…so what if I still have to stand in line for an hour to pay the gas bill…now I know if I am jonesing for an icecream cone but it is too hot to walk over, I can just call up my buddies at Amazonas Taxi and they will take care of me…amazing.

Oh, and we moved into a new place with a garden and a dog. It is great. Nice old house on a quiet side of town. See pictures. There is a guest flat downstairs so whenever you are ready to come for a visit, the door is open. And don’t worry, if you leave your toothbrush at home we will just call a cab.

---

---