Projects and Pictures

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Dear friends -

Our blog had some technical difficulties but I think everything should be fine now so I am resending last week's blog to everyone. Plus - bonus pictures from a trip to the villages last week. We headed out to Almas on a snowy day and visited many of the local craft makers and I have attached pics.

Thanks and have a great week!

Last week's blog:

Greetings from finally snowy Transylvania. And what a lot of snow…it has been coming down for about a week and yesterday we got out to play. We traveledto one of the nearby villages with our home stay family from Odorhei to do some sledding. Sledding here means attaching your sled to the back of a car and off you go…there are worse ways to see the villages I suppose though I did rather wish to be in one of the traditional horse-drawn sleighs and taking some pictures instead of holding on for dear life.

Speaking of pictures, we have had comments from many about our photography. In answer to this interest, we have set up a gallery you can visit to see some of our best and, if you would like to support our work here, buy one. 100% of the proceeds will naturally go to support our projects.

To find our Gallery:
Cut and paste into browser: http://www.americanframe.com/artshop/artgallery/
Click on Artist Galleries
Finally type ’Worman’ in the search field (upper left hand corner)
Pick one you like, frame it if you want, and help make a difference!

Both to get you excited and because we needed to update you on what we are doing here are some of the projects we are currently focused on:

Almas Fruit Project
Alecia is leading a traditional fruit drying revitalization project in Homorod Almas (village in many of the pictures). The goal is to generate interest in re-starting fruit drying practices that died out during communism and create a fruit co-op. Pairing farm youth and elderly citizens (who own the land and orchards) we hope to generate income through sales of the product and perhaps build it to the point of exporting a Slow-Food product. Long-term we would also like to create a gene bank of local fruit trees and perhaps a greenhouse the school could manage. This is part of a larger project in the community to encourage responsible tourism, environmental protection. We hope to renovate a home in Almas and create a regional educational center for projects like this, agricultural, environmental management and more.

Volunteer Tourism
www.experience-green.agora.ro. Chris has developed the Agora Experience as a volunteer tourism project for Agora. The goal of the Experience is to attract American youth to a Peace Corps-esque summer sustainable development program. Beyond being a great opportunity for youth, the Experience will have short term physical effects realized through projects (building a trail or camp site, working with local orchards etc…) and longer term effects of providing a positive volunteer example to communities. Please check out our website (we appreciate feedback) and if you know anyone who might be interested, let them and/or us know - we would love to see them! Further, if you are interested, email us a note and we would be glad to send you information on a similar opportunity for adults.

Community Support
Fundraising is not common here but funding changes thanks to the European Union have made it incredibly important for NGOs to find ways to sustain themselves. Thus we are looking at small businesses like the above but also into organizing community support campaigns. Chris is working on organizing some events in businesses and with the larger public to raise awareness and take advantage of the Romanian tax-break structure. This project will hopefully lead to healthier, more communicative NGOs, increased volunteerism, and a renewed interest in the tradition of Kalaka (community building).

These are a couple of the more prominent projects we are into and we hope that you will consider visiting our gallery and supporting our work here. The $20-$50 for one of the prints goes a really long way here and can do anything from provide a complete tourism training to build a solar fruit drier. Feel free to email if we can answer any questions.

Thanks and we hope you all are well,
Chris and Alecia

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