Bucharest, November 2, 2017 – Between January-October 2017, more than 3,000 volunteers have been involved in the actions organized by the Vodafone Romania Foundation and the programs that the foundation supports under the partnerships with non-governmental organizations accross the country. More than 700 of them are employees of Vodafone Romania who participated in volunteering activities for approximately 1,700 beneficiaries, people in difficult situations: children, adults from disadvantaged families, elderly peoples.
Volunteering is one of the four strategic pillars of Vodafone Romania Foundation’s activities, along with health, education and social services. Starting 2015, the foundation has been organizing at least two volunteering events monthly for Vodafone Romania employees. As a result of the growing number of enrollments recorded annually for such activities, the foundation made use of technology to make this activity more efficient. In 2015, it created an online platform that manages all the volunteering projects that can be attended by employees. Volunteers interested can use the platform to find updated details and enroll the activities from the foundation’s calendar. Depending on the projects planned, volunteers can participate in various activities, from sports competitions organized for the benefit of people with disabilities, workshops for manufacturing objects for charitable fairs, housing sanitation actions for elderly people wihtout support, sessions for reading stories and other the activity for children with incurable diseases or the preparation of canned vegetables for disadvantaged people under „Camara de iarna” project. The programs for social housing renovation and construction, run in 13 counties across the country with 2,400 volunteers involved, are among the volunteering activities that mobilized the largest number of participants.
„Year after year, we see an increasing interest from people to participate as volunteers in various actions. Volunteering has become an intrinsic value of our work, a way of being for our colleagues involved in social projects and our partners who join the initiatives we launch, as well as those from the disadvantaged communities who discovered that their help is very important to build a better life for everyone, ” said Angela Galeta, Director of the Vodafone Romania Foundation.
Besides mobilizing Vodafone Romania’s volunteers, over 1,700 a year, the foundation encourages volunteer-oriented behavior at the national level through programs developed with partner organizations that involve hundreds of people in various actions that change the lives of communities in all regions of the country. „Investii in Mediul Rural”, for example, is a strategic program run annually that includes the volunteering component as a requirement for the partner organizations to receive funding. The 2016-2017 edition of the program mobilized over 500 volunteers in projects that had nearly 20,000 rural beneficiaries – economically or socially disadvantaged children and elderly people.
In a different field, „O sansa pentru viata”, the national program aimed at renovating and modernizing all blood transfusion centers and the largest blood donation program in Romania, managed to mobilize over 13,200 volunteer donors last year within the mobile campaigns organized in Vodafone Romania and more thant 40 other companies in the country.
The project of renovation and modernization of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Constanta County Hospital, run in 2017, the Vodafone Romania Foundation organized a special race for fundraising, within „Maratonul Nisipului” event, which was attended voluntarily by nearly 150 families.
Another example of mobilizing large numbers of volunteers is „Scrisori pentru Mos Craciun”, a program that brings Christmas gifts, every year, for hundreds of children from disadvantaged communities. The total number of volunteers involved across the country in this program, since 2010, exceeded 2,200.
Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental organization with charitable status, distinct and independent of the company’s commercial operations, established in 1998. During the 19 years of activity, Vodafone Romania Foundation has financed 1,046 programs run by 660 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of health, education, social services. The projects had 1.9 million beneficiaries – children, young and old people, physically, socially or economically disadvantaged persons. So far, Vodafone Romania has invested more than 26 million euros in projects run by nonprofit partner organizations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available on fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatia-vodafone.ro/ and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone .
