Qualified for life

The old centre of Bucharest. On one side, a city full of colour and joy, smelling of flavoured sticks, second hand clothes and cheese pie. Small bistros hidden in basements no one would’ve know that still exist...Rock and jazz clubs, Chinese or Hungarian restaurants. On the other side, a labyrinth of tall, 19th century houses, on the verge of collapsing. Facades covered by weeds. From time to time a dark-skinned boy walking in the middle of the street, humming and clapping his hands in the rhythm of a tune he alone can understand. Just a few hundreds of metres away, the ruins of the 16th Princely Court are a reminder of long forgotten times, when all decisions were made there. The St. Anton Church, always full of believers, and across the street, the Manuc Inn, built in the 18th century, waiting for customers to stop by. Old buildings still standing, once famous inns, and printing houses dating back to the period between the wars. The former communist regime, looking for an excuse to pull down anything reminding of history, moved entire families of gypsies into those old buildings. Accustomed with the blue sky as roof, they did not care much about the iron laces, the high ceilings or the frontons supported by caryatids. The old city seemed to be slowly dying. So the municipality decided to give the city and its inhabitants a chance, and hired several dis-institutionalized young people to restore several old buildings in the Old Court area.
According to the law in force, those who have lived their entire lives in an orphanage are forced to leave it when they turn 18. Most of them have no place to go to. Often they feel the society ‘owes’ them for the years they had to spend in a home. They dream of fabulous sums of money they get overnight after winning the lottery or playing bingo, or of imaginary inheritances. All say they want a family, a house, a job. How many of them succeed? Who will hire them? Where can they find a job? We asked Bogdan Vlad, a young man who spent half of his life in orphanages, what the day when he came of age meant to him. “They told me I had to leave, it didn’t matter where. I was lucky to be sent by the manager of the orphanage to an association. You can imagine how it feels to have to take you life in your own hands at only 18 and to have nothing but the clothes you’re wearing. It’s tough. Most young people say ‘ I’ll start stealing and so I will have both a home a something to eat. Those who know better, do whatever they can to succeed, to be accepted by the society,
The project entitled ‘ A Beautiful Bucharest ‘ was initiated two years ago by the UN Program for Development, and it was a chance for Bogdan and other 40 young people like him. They were selected with the help of the orphanages’ managers and NGOs. They were offered a training course in masonry or wall painting, a course of social counselling, and even a place to stay. After graduating from these training courses, they renovated a kindergarten in Bucharest. Early this spring they were hired by the municipality to restore the old centre of Bucharest. Some of them have applied for another exam meant to attest the fact that they are trained for life. A foundation in Bucharest called Sperante (Hopes in English), has bought a few single room flats for the young craftsmen. If they keep their jobs and if they prove they can earn enough money to take care of themselves next summer they will become owners of the respective flats. The social co-ordinator of the project, Florin Banateanu, told me that the success of this programme was due to the first beneficiaries: “In the beginning we were facing a lot of problems because no one believed in this programme. Everybody thought it was too good to be true; no one believed the youths would also have their own flats at the end of the programme. The first wave was a success: 85% of the youths have a job, 16 of them have already moved to the flats offered by the Sperante foundation an the rest of them will move the moment the foundation buys the necessary flats. Some of the young persons were not interested in this project but I can say that there were also happy cases when young men or young ladies got married. From our point of view these are successes we should talk about.”
At present Bogdan Vlad, minds his own business and he knows that this summer the single room flat he lives in will be his alone. He has a stable job. There are 20 more facade to renovate downtown Bucharest. We asked him about what he was going to do when his contract is terminated: “I’ll still work in the housing field. There’s no problem; I’ll find a job. I can work as builder, painter, anything. I can even do unskilled work, I can do anything. In the beginning, here, they told us they would pay us 1 million 400 thousand lei a months, that is about 50$ but I hope they would raise the salaries by at least 2 - 3 hundred thousand lei. I feel all right. I live alone and I have enough money, I’m doing fine. I cannot complain; God forbid.”
Another 40 young persons have already started consultancy and training courses. At a press conference organised to announce the start of the Beautiful Bucharest project Traian Basescu, mayor of our capital city, said that that was only the beginning: “I believe that others, besides the municipality, can adopt such solutions. It stands proof of the fact that this is posible. As a matter of fact, 1 million dollars, the costs for this programme, is not a large amount of money. There are 2 milestones: the attempt to restore Bucharest’s old town and the fact that children who seemed to be hopeless are mainly doing that restoration.”