"Pentru Voi" carried out four projects throughout 2002:
1. Advancing Human Rights for People with Intellectual Disabilities
Advancing Human Rights for People with Intellectual Disabilities in Civil Society is an international project, started by Inclusion Europe in 2000, that involves eight countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Slovenia, Hungary, Macedonia, The Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania. "Pentru Voi" Foundation and the National League of the Associations for Supporting the Mental Handicapped in Romania implement this project in Romania.
The main activities that took place this year are: launching of the Country Report of Romania in Brussels and Strasbourg, national conference for the launching of Romania's Country Report in Bucharest, meeting of the project organization team at Timisoara, a seminar on lobby in Skopje, Macedonia.
Laila Onu and Ghizela Ghereben, self-advocate, were present in Brussels as representatives of the National League. By this occasion they had meetings with representatives of the European institutions, as: Mr. Lazar Comanescu, Romania's Ambassador at the European Union, Mrs. Roelie Post, from the Enlargement General Directorate, representative of the World Bank, MEPs: Mrs. Christa Prets, Mr. Jo Leinen, Baroness Emma Nicholson, Mrs. Margot Kessler, Mr. Armin Laschet.
34 persons, as representatives of Romanians NGOs participated in the Rapport launching conference. Mr. Victor Wahlstrom, representing the UN special Rapporteur, and the adviser of the prim Minister on social items were present.
Cristina Busuioc took part at the seminar on lobby organized in Macedonia.
The meeting of the project partners took place in Timisoara. The discussions were about lobby activities, future actions of the project and quality standards. We translated Agenda 22 and it's ready to be published.
2. Parents Mobilization Action Group
The activities of this project are related to the Advancing Human Rights project; both of them are realized in collaboration with the National League, Inclusion Europe and Inclusion International. Promoting the draft of the National Strategy on Equalizing the Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, which was finally approved by the Government in November 2002, was one of our main objectives.
We continued supporting the National League in writing project proposals in order to open a day center in Bucharest and to UNICEF, for promoting examples of good practice.
We had meetings with the members of the Dutch team that provides consultancy to the Romanian Government, in the frame of a Twinning Light project, financed by EU, for the development of an Action Plan to implement the Strategy.
"Pentru Voi" Foundation was chose as one of the five training centers in Eastern Europe to provide training to Eastern European organizations. This selection was the consequence of the excellent results that we obtained in the field of services for persons with intellectual disabilities. Open Society Institute finances the project and chooses the organizations benefiting of the training among the one the Institute already financed.
The first training module took place this year on 14 - 20 October. The theme was "De-institutionalization - a priority for Romania" and representatives of two organizations from Latvia, one from Bulgaria, one from Macedonia and two from Romania participated in the training session. The training participants had the opportunity to visit the services provided by "Pentru Voi" and to be acquainted with the working methods used.
The Health Policies and Services Center, member of Open Soros Network, financed this project. Self-advocacy activities, Raul Alb summer camp, publishing of "Pentru Voi" magazine and of the Practical Guide on De-institutionalization, support of the social and professional integration of the nine service users of DINU - all these activities were realized through this project. We organized a baker training for ten service users and found two jobs in construction for two DINU service users; one of the graduated of the bakery training was employed as baker for a determined period of time.