Be a doer!
LET'S DO IT ROMANIA
Bucharest | Romania
We started Let’s do it Romania in 2009 after hearing about this crazy idea from Estonia which they launched in 2008 - says Anca Banita. They decided to clean the whole country in just one day. They were pioneers and they managed to gather 2000 people in one day and their success was translated to a video. It was a seed that was planted in many hearts around the globe, also in Romania. As a team, we didn’t know each other before, we gathered around this idea.
At the beginning organizing something like this in Romania seemed impossible, people were sceptical and didn't give it much of a chance.
But we believed a lot in the idea and from a small team in Bucharest we started to involve people from all over Romania. We got in touch with Estonia and they shared with us their experience. It took us one year to organize a proper event. We started in September 2009 and the first cleanup day took place the 25th September 2010. We planned everything. We built teams. We started to discuss with local and central authorities. We attracted the media. A lot of them came for the press conference organized in March. Even the Minister of Environment showed up to give support.
What pushed them on was a deep conviction and a challenging goal, which finally inspired a lot of people to join.
Because we were true believers and real ambassadors a lot of people started to come. At some point this energy grew so much, people started to help us with whatever they could. Someone built a website, another person gave us free access to media, someone else helped with tv commercials. The moment we managed to reach Tv and Radio it became really big. We had that feeling that nobody can say no to us. Everybody wanted to support us in one way or another. It was amazing. Even if the first months were not easy. Beside supporters there were a lot of haters, people trying to discourage us. Our core message from the beginning was: “We don't complain, we just make a difference.”
And finally the big day came.
The 25th of September. 200.000 people joined that day, it was the biggest social movement in Romania. It was a huge success and a lot of people were very surprised that so many Romanians went out to do something with dirt. People liked the idea of really seeing the impact after 1,2,3 hours of work. They came with friends, family, educated people.
The success was so big that they decided to continue. They kept going with organizing not only cleaning days, but other projects as well.
We created an organization, we got funds, we have people employed, we really developed from volunteers who work with passion. We have a lot of different ideas, not only about the cleaning day. Now, strategically we have 2 directions: helping the environment and making more doers. Inspire people through events. You don’t have to wait for others. Things are possible. We believe everybody can be a doer.
More about Let's do it Romania: letsdoitromania.ro