Implementation period: 15 July , 2016 – 15 March , 2017
Supported by the Global Fund for Community Foundations, the PACT Foundation is developing its own capacity of proposing programs and activities that can make significant and sustainable changes for the communities. Through this project we are learning, experiencing and developing our skills in three important areas for us:
- Financial education programme for the vulnerable communities: founding a programme for financial planning skills development of the members of the small communities;
- Advocacy: promoting an advocacy programme starting from a problem identified in a local area by the members of the community;
- Fundraising: developing fundraising programmes for supporting disadvantaged communities.
The community we work with to develop the advocacy campaign in this program is the one from the Valea Corbului village, Argeș County.
Valea Corbului is an informal settlement situated at the end of the Călinești commune in Argeș County. Most of the families live in poor conditions and don’t have any property deeds for their lands or houses. The lack of property deeds makes it difficult for many families to be legally connected to the electrical network, they can’t benefit of various public services and aren’t able to build or sell legally. Moreover, a big part of the community seems to be placed on the territory of another village and, as long as the land situation is not clarified, the Town Hall doesn’t ensure street lighting or any public infrastructure in that part of the village. The legal situation is further complicated by the fact that the whole village is surrounded by a high voltage highway, whose presence makes building houses illegal.
We work with the initiative group from Valea Corbului and with members of the community, local public authorities, national level experts in housing issues, planners and representatives of relevant national institutions to identify the legal and administrative solutions so that the people from Valea Corbului can live safely and legally in their own community.
The project from Valea Corbului was one of the three initiatives proposed and supported at the Donors’ Circle in September 2016.