About the Project "STARTING FROM SCRATCH"

OUR PLANS AND PURPOSES

We named our project „Starting from scratch” because we start this project without any financial help from any authority, the only help we have is the one of the volunteers from the village (especially from the young „green agents” whom you can see in the pictures from the first page) and of the volunteers who will work on the blog for translations and promotion.

The method we use „making the most of each centimeter”, will be explained step by step, on this page.

On a small scale, our purpose is to help the local people from the countryside, to raise their living standards, not only in Vadu Soresti. We would like for our aactivity to expand during the whole county and even further, „Starting from scratch” is meant to be a project for the development of agro-tourism in Romania.

„Helping the local people” does not mean, for our team, raising fonds for them and providing them „social assistance” but it means creating new jobs, sources of income which will help them live decent lives.

One of the first steps we want to take, is to clean the village of recyclable wastes, help the nature reborn, so that we have the same landscapes as we used to have when we were children, when plastic hadn’t gained so much territory in this environment.

Another objective would be to encourage children to continue their studies after secondary school, most of the schools in the countryside only provide education for eight grades. Children will be able to do practical work in more fields:

1) Accounting – they will keep the evidence of the funds obtained by the „Chinese Language Camp”, information about the funds will be available on the blog and they will be used to rebuild the village, each use of the funds will also be transparent for the public;

What are the purposes for obtaining these funds?

a) Building bathrooms in the local people’s houses, installing water heaters, in order to provide the necessary comfort for tourists during the winter;

b) Restoring the school from Vadu Soresti which has an interesting history, the first building of the school was mentioned in 1845. At present, the school is abandoned and it is not in a very good condition.

What do we need? Whitewash, windows and volunteers but especially an approval from the authorities which we hope to be able to obtain. 

In case we do not manage to make this building become a school again, we could however perform other activities in it:

-     have our Chinese lessons in the rainy summer days or during the winter;

-      transform a few classrooms in a small village museum, with historic composition (taking into account the three archaeological sites and the Neolithic necropolis, mentioned on the first page of this blog) and cultural compostion (we could exhibit, peasants clothes, vases, objects used in different traditional customs and events, etc.);

-       other classrooms could become markets where each of the local people could have his/her stall, to bring his/her own products and allow visitors to taste/try them, according to their specific: fruit and vegetables or products obtained from these – jam, tomatoes pasta, tomatoes juice, stew, syrup, wine, plum brandy and other traditional drinks, cheese specialties, handmade objects, highly appreciated at present, knitted objects, woven objects, etc; this would be an opportunity for them to become known, to have small businesses providing different goods in small quantities, thus earning money, improving their present lives and also being able to pay for their retirement allowances, etc.

-   we could introduce a small ticket fare for those who want to visit the museum, children under 7 years, local people and students from Chinese classes will be exempt from the tax;  

c) Setting-up the archaeological sites, including those two situated close to Vadu Soresti, more precisely in Zarnesti. In order to do that, we should start by getting in touch with an archaeologist from Buzau, maybe one working for the History Museum in Buzau, who could provide us information about the sites, translation of the information about them in other languages, marking the sites, making them visible by means of boards/panels where visitors can read information about them. We could introduce small fares for visitors, the sums obtained will be posted on the blog, as well as the purposes for which they will be used. The setting-up of the sites will be basic first, meaning that we will not have the funds to install benches for the tourists to rest on but we will  definitely be able to bring some chairs from the local people;

2) in tourism: tourists will be impressed by their young guides (we will teach them to present tourists – even in foreign languages –  the village and the places mentioned above, as well as the great forest Nania, the hills and valleys, each with its own legend); our team is also curious to find out all these legends and we are sure that you are curious too! We are waiting for you to come so that we go together on Sorii Valley and to Frunza Lake, which is said to be a lake without bottom, wow, why would you say that is?!

3) in ecology and environment protection: “the green agents” have

experience now, you have already seen them on the first page of our blog, those photos were taken in 2011, they know both how to plant trees and how to collect wastes; step by step, they will also improve their theoretical knowledge

4) in journalism: they will write themselves, impressions and opinions, about the activities they performed and these will be posted on our blog, they will learn to express themselves freely from an young age!



5) in photography : they definitely have what to take photos of in Vadu Soresti – the landscapes, the sites, the rooms available for the tourists, everything will be posted on our blog; moreover, they could take photos of tourists on different occasions and then give them to the latter;

6) other things

Why should we try to make children get used to these practices? Well, in life generally, in career especially, we all know how true the following expression is: “Devil is in the details”. Children do things with pleasure, they have fun, they “absorb” everything, later they will be tired, bored by so much theory – the team the Chinese Language Camp knows so well what that means - and it will not be too easy for them to put the knowledge in practice.

d) internet in the whole village : we hope to have wireless internet even on the alleys of the village; actually, it would not be the first village in Romania to have that implemented;

The reason: we make the village available for all types of tourists, not only for those who want to be isolated from the world during their holiday; moreover, using the Internet, we could send more easily the materials necessary for the study of Chinese, everything in one click; at the moment, it would be advisable for those who come to the camp to learn Chinese, to bring their own laptops and memory sticks and to allow time to come to the teacher and have the necessary materials copied in electronic format. All local people do not have Internet, that is why, this summer, we will kindly ask the local people who have such services to allow students who do not live in their houses to have access to the Internet. 

In addition to that, people will promote their small businesses :-) Or what is more: we will not use paper to print documents, we will learn to love the forest and nature again. 

Briefly, knowledge and comfort :-)

e) some asphalt work for bicycle tracks, as narrow as possible, so that they do not harm nature, on the hills and in the forest; at present, we have access by bike on the main road of the village (with asphalt) and on the alleys (without asphalt) and we can enjoy nature, silence and great landscapes in the area between the villages Vadu Soresti and Pruneni. 

In conclusion: sport and healthy habits, relaxation in the middle of nature :-)

f) sewage in the village; we already have the system for water supply, so we dream, since it is not a dream far from reality; until the dream comes true, we use the septic tanks, there aren’t too many of those either, unfortunately;

Concisely: tidiness and comfort :-)

g) solar panels and batteries in the yard of each family; even if it would not be possible to give up completely using wood for the heating of houses during autumn, winter and even spring, these would definitely prevent massive trees cutting, they would lower the consumption of electrical energy, thus reducing useless expenses; moreover, the level of comfort will increase significantly: heat in every room during the cold seasons and warm water anytime. 

Briefly: high comfort and protected nature :-)

h) the purchase of some modern tools which will be used to dig the gardens of the people from the village, using the classical hoes and spades would require too much time which could be used for other purposes; we’ll learn at the same time with them, to grow bio-vegetables which will be consumed by the students/tourists/visitors, the latter will be able to pick them up themselves from the host’s garden; thus, we could avoid other useless expenses on behalf of the villagers, they will not need to buy vegetables from town, which could be imported from other countries and they could even open their own small businesses, by selling the vegetables and the other products obtained from these and they won’t have to go to the market to sell them. 

The result: health and comfort :-)

i) the purchase of a printer which will allow both scanning documents and making photocopies, so that even those who do not own a laptop or a memory stick could attend our classes, there will probably be such students as well; the moment we afford to lend laptops to our students who do not own one, we will give up printing documents, since we are aware that trees are part of the source of our lives. 

Briefly: equality and comfort :-)

Our objectives do not end here: the moment we have reached most of the purposes mentioned above, we’ll definitely be able to bring our contribution to the return of the Romanian people who left to work abroad and who left their children home alone or in their grandparents’ care.
After we have expanded at county level and even further with our results in the field of rural tourism especially, the effects will definitely be felt by other social classes and we hope that at least a part of the teachers, doctors, engineers and others who left to work abroad, will come back in the country and they will not leave again.