For more than 27 years, our organization- Pro Vobis, believed in the power of volunteering to change for the better the communities with which it interacts.
Experience has shown us that collaboration has its magical force to multiply the impact we can have on a community. Since 2017 we became part of the Points of Light Global Network and we witness the powerful effects massive corporate volunteering actions can have upon beneficiaries from all sorts of backgrounds.
This year, our organization has collaborated with two very engaged companies, eager to get involved and to use their time to create wonderful changes for those in need.
The second collaboration we had this year was with a company that already experimented the potential of corporate volunteering in 2017 and decided to return to us and create a bigger impact through their work, EA – Electronic Arts Romania. Since EA had different causes that they wanted to support, the corporate volunteering day of September 12, 2019 was intense and diverse from the perspective of activities volunteers could choose from- especially since we wanted to tackle the needs of 4 different organizations in one day!
The first beneficiary was Pinocchio Children Center – an emergency center that takes in children who remain without a family or a home – we worked in the most degraded and in-need children center we identified in Bucharest. Here, we had a team of 50 EA volunteers and our priority was to recondition the bedrooms in which children were living. Besides the writing and inappropriate messages that we wanted to remove from the walls, it was also very important to improve the living conditions, by repairing the holes in the walls and cleaning the rooms. We managed to re-paint and brighten up 11 bedrooms from the center, a task that took a lot of effort, especially since some of the walls were heavily damaged and needed consolidation, but this did not stop our hardworking volunteers. More than this, together with the kids, they also cleaned up the garbage in the front courtyard and reconditioned a wooden gazebo, adding handmade paintings. At the end of the day, the team did not only change the atmosphere in the dormitories but also managed to set up an outdoor seating area for the children, installing 4 brand new benches and building flower installations out of used tyres, to bring more color and enjoyment to the center.
The second beneficiary was Vacaresti Natural Park, one of the biggest urban nature parks in Europe. The team of 48 EA volunteers equipped with rakes, scissors, brooms, bags, axes, and their almighty energy, gathered over 70 bags of debris and garbage, they cleaned and nicely arranged one of the entrances of the park as well as over 100 meters of the pier surrounding it, they sanitised the walking trails and the amphitheatre, picked up weeds and invasive plants from the meadows and near the pier, but also removed reed around the lake, cut shrubs that engulf the local vegetation and prepared them for later use in the park, on the wooden structures.
Our third location for the day was the Red Panda Animal Shelter, an organization that rescues and prepares for adoption wonderful dogs and other animals from the street. Here, the team of 28 volunteers painted the fences of 11 paddocks and refurbished and coated in rubber paint 12 paddock floors, to create a safer and cleaner space for the 15 dogs housed now at Red Panda. They played with the dogs and even organized a photo-shoot for 10 of the dogs, that will be used to facilitate their adoption. The volunteers also sorted out donations, arranged the inner garden vegetation and painted a 26-meter wall at the shelter entrance, as a testimony of the love and care the organization mobilizes around the animals they protect, with the wonderful message „You can’t buy love, but you can rescue it.”
Our last but not least location was the headquarters of the EA team, where a group of 27 lovely and inventive EA volunteers worked with tremendous dedication and creativity to support 157 children and youth who are being served by the organization SOS Children Villages Romania. The volunteers assembled 157 hygiene kits, preparing the boxes, labeling them with hand-drawn signs, so the kids know which packet suits their age and gender. But they did not stop at this, they also crafted personalized cards and letters for every single child or youth who would receive a kit, thinking about positive messages and encouragements to reach the children when they open their kits and placing parts of their souls on paper. With this creative mood unwrapped, it was time to start the second task, which was to paint rocks for a Kindness Rock Corner to be set up in the Bucharest SOS village. The wonderful volunteers took their time to paint and decorate the rocks and put inspiring messages on them, imagining how a child or youth would pick a rock in a moment when a kind word is exactly what they would need!
At the end of our EA Gives Back corporate volunteering day, we were more than proud to see the results that over 150 volunteers can have, especially summing up all the hard work that was done in all 4 locations and the great feedback received from beneficiaries and our local partner organizations!
