Andreea discovered the potential of activities she could be doing after having participated in youth projects for a couple of years. So, she decided to be part of the learning context of our youth. Andreea’s second motivation is to give back something to the community and empower youngsters from the community to do the same.

Andreea is making her living by being involved in youth projects both at the local level and international. Even though her entrepreneurship model is a non-profit organisation, she sees her organisation as a business and her work as a job she loves doing.

Management structure and governance

YS activity is non-profit. Its board has four members, 3 of them being the founding ones. The management team is of 2 persons. Depending on the activity or project, external people work on it following the needs of that time.

Principles of work, objectives and activities

YS main principle of work is to do little by little, step by step, youngster by youngster. It may not seem like a great impact if one goes at the individual level, but YS rather focuses on transforming the lives of one rather than working with more and distributing their attention in various cases.

For the moment, YS have only short-term objectives, which as soon as they fulfil, they will be able to put on pause once more their activity and rethink and plan everything in detail and on a longer term through a strategy.

The core activities they implement now are promoting sports and volunteering in sports, promoting volunteering in general and training and supporting young musicians in obtaining potential profit out of their work.

YS ‘notable ongoing project addresses young musicians affected by the pandemic. The Sound Beats Time project is implemented in partnership with IREA (Romanian Institute for Adult Education) and Giovani senza Frontiere – Giosef Italy, to train young people with the skills necessary to obtain financial benefits from the cultural-musical field. The proposed activities are intended for young people, youth workers and organisations in the youth and cultural fields. The expected results are in the form of physical and online courses (such as: how to train, practice and improve your musical skills with online tutoring and how to create a brand and promote your music online), as well as a platform that will bring together young artists from Romania and Italy, but also the rest of Europe.

Regarding volunteering, YS is hosting and training interns within the European Solidarity Corps Programme. This aspect is important for Andreea because she wants to change the young people’s perception that Erasmus and volunteering is a way of free tourism and party.

Target groups

YS’s main target group is youth aged 14-35 years old. As secondary beneficiaries, they work with children that are to become their target youth and relatives concerning the youth, teachers, trainers and other third parties that have a significant influence on the youth’s life. Since Baia Mare city is rather medium-small, it tries to keep up with the more cosmopolitan and active big cities in Romania where are many NGOs. Therefore, YS is one of the active initiatives in the youth sector in Baia Mare and managed to create a hot spot where young people spend their time with YS volunteers, both local and international.

Innovation

YS work with people, for people in a close perspective. For YS is not that important what you have in your CV but what practical experiences you have or those that you are eager to learn. Most of the time, YS volunteers and collaborators were chosen from a personal perspective rather than the professional one. That is what brought YS great results and an intense learning process for both sides.

Key partners

YS collaborates with local institutions such as museums or schools/high schools at the local level, while in the international context, they have foreign partners, mainly other NGOs. YS is not part of any particular network.

Impact and Evaluation

YS relies a lot on people’s reactions, feedback and opinion (focus groups, questionnaires, discussions, observations), as well as, on their evolution. YS keeps track of some of the people with whom they worked, now and then. They pop up to check on them. The results from these people speak more for the YS team than words could.

YS supported young people in pursuing their dream careers for accessing education (medical, communication, psychology, etc.) or changing jobs, helping others finish their education, getting jobs, and accessing international opportunities that changed life’s courses.

Recommendations

For YS, using people’s creativity is the best way to save money on tight-budgeted projects. They can come up with extraordinary ideas that, most of the time, are efficient and a boost for personal confidence.

Volunteers can be a great resource for ideas. You create indeed a good learning context for them, but you learn too. Every person can give you so much if you have the time to get involved at a personal level with them, not just for professional purposes.

Listen carefully to everyone’s ideas – they may give you points to start from and develop something nice.

Lessons Learned

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the last-minute decisions worked great so far for YS. This is not to say that planning is bad, yet now and then, YS let themselves go with the flow, and they ended up having nice ideas for projects and the results were amazing. Sound Beat Time is one example.

It is very important to have good partners and discuss all the details before applying for or starting a project. Eliminate all the potential risks by talking and deciding everything within a contract.

For Andreea, to put first the people and the activity for their sake, not the money. You might get rich, but money is temporary. You learn better when you do things with an open heart. One can follow this ethical principle: people as ends, not means.

Every challenge is, in fact, an undiscovered potential opportunity. Don’t give up from the beginning. Sleep on it, discuss with others, brainstorm and listen to others.

References

Yellow Shirts Facebook profile.