ARC decided to use its experience in mobilizing community resources, as a way to contribute in capacity development of Romanian NGOs, for running the ENGAGE program in Romania. Thus, the program will focus on how employees and companies will work long term with NGOs in order to create a sustainable networks for serving communities needs.
Employee volunteers in Romania
Petrom Romania is the leader of ENGAGE program in Romania and other companies expressed their intention to join. Companies willing to become a part of the program can adhere as members and join common communities initiatives. Thus, programs will receive the support of volunteers from more than one company and also, they will be financially assisted by the members.
ENGAGE Romania will serve its corporate members on three different levels. ARC, the administrator of the network will assist the companies in applying internal polls regarding the motivations and willingness for community involvement of the employees.
Based on the most frequently mentioned causes that employees of all member companies, ARC will launch a call for proposals for NGOs. The selected NGOs will receive a seed-grant for preparing themselves as host organizations. Thus they will be able to buy equipment, tools or anything else is needed to offer the corporate volunteers a successful activity in the organization.
As a third way in assisting the member companies, ARC will offer training sessions for corporate representatives on one hand and NGOs on the other, on how to use these partnerships at best. Companies will receive information on how they can use corporate volunteering as part of their CSR strategies, how to administer and motivate the volunteers and which are the basic elements of transparency they should ask from their NGO partners.
On the other hand, the NGOs will learn on what it means to be a host for corporate volunteers, how to estimate the effort needed to prepare for the activities, how to communicate with the companies and how to report.
ARC, will also offer constant reporting to the member companies and will create a transparent flow of information regarding the different stages of the program, the results and feeling of the people involved in volunteer activities. At the end of one year implementation, ARC will create the ENGAGE Romania brochure, which will present the evolution of the pilot year of the program.
The estimated numbers of members for the first year of implementation is between four to six, and the annual member fee is 10.000 Euro. Around 60% of the annual fees will cover the seed-grants for the host NGOs, 20% will cover the training costs of the corporate and NGO representatives and 20% will cover communication and administrative costs.
Agenda
December 2008 – January 2009 contracting corporate members
February 2009 launching event
March – April 2009 training sessions
January – April 2009 internal polls
April – May 2009 call for proposals and NGOs selection
May – August 2009 projects implementation
September 2009 closing event, group report
Posted by
Jennifer Todd
Secretariat
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Associated Partner:
Asociatia Pentru Relatii Comunitare (ARC)