History

Short history

 

The Ecumenical Association of Churches in Romania - AIDRom is an ecumenical organization of five Churches, founded in 1991, representative at both confessional and ethnical level in Romania:

 

• Romanian Orthodox Church (Founding Member) 
• Reformed Church in Romania (Founding Member)
• Evangelical CA Church in Romania (Founding Member)
• Lutheran Evangelical Church in Romania
• Armenian Church in Romania

 

 

AIDRom has constituted as a platform for financing, communitarian development and inter-confessional and inter-ethnical dialogue. According to its mandates, AIDRom has been empowered ab initio to be operative by: financing projects, consultancy, expertise transfer, action for increasing the managerial capacity and for implementing projects at the level of community, institutions etc, in the following fields:

1. social and community assistance;
2. community development;
3. environment protection and sustainable development;
4. climate change;
5. human rights;
6. gender equality;
7. development education and assistance;
8. trafficking in human beings;
9. working conditions;
10. disaster preparedness and risk management;
11. inter-religious and inter-ethnical peace and reconciliation;
12. transformative justice, facilitation and mediation;
13. anti-discrimination and anti-stigmata policies;
14. ecumenical education, ecumenical dialogue, inter-church international relations;
15. lobby and advocacy;
16. social economy in the framework of EU standards;
17. migration and development/gender migration;
18. HIV-AIDS: anti-stigmata and rights;
19. capacity building in the frame of AIDRom’s mandates;
20. drug demand reduction and prevention policies;
21. funds and grants administration, monitoring and impact evaluation.

 

The target groups of AIDRom’s and our partners’ activities are:

 

• Marginalized groups: children at risk, persons with disabilities, victims of domestic violence, victims of trafficking in human beings, unemployed, elderly, the economically disadvantaged, migrants, people living with HIV;
• Members of non-governmental organizations;
• Rural/urban communities;
• Ethnical and confessional groups, with focus on Rroma;
• Clergy;
• Women in politics and corporate responsibility;
• Social workers and assistants;
• Public servants in the development structures of the civil society, trade unions and churches;
• Authority representatives, public servants, anti-organized crime officers, etc.;
• Teaching persons, social activists, community leaders;
• Representatives of initiative groups in ethnical community;
• Youth and women in Church and Society.

 

Through the programs of AIDRom and its partners we intend to continue our contributive activity in supplying:

 

  -  social services: counseling centers on labour rights (Iasi, Bucharest, Cluj, Hunedoara), reintegration of social groups at risk;

  -  educational services: school reintegration, prevention and assessing the school abandon etc.;

  -  socio-professional services: labour market reintegration, vocational trainings;

  -  services for increasing capacity: trainings in the field of project management, communication management, conflict management, mediation, organizational and community management, professional adult education and lifelong learning;

  -  services in the field of human rights: anti-discriminating trainings and policies, prevention and reintegration for the victims of trafficking in human beings and domestic violence;

  -  services in the field of sustainable rural development, protected area management and the climate change;

  -  services in disaster preparedness and risk management;

  -  services and resources in the field of ecumenism and ecumenical dialogue;

  -  expertise and resources in the field of international development.

 

Through the financial support and consultancy of AIDRom there have been created throughout time: jobs (temporary or permanent), stability in community development (economical projects for the Rroma communities), there have been developed structures with operative capacity in the society (diakonal departments for churches and non-governmental organizations that are active in different fields), and in circumstances of calamities or disasters our programs were complementary to the reconstruction effort of the central and local authorities by building houses, bridges, dams and by distributing direct emergency help.

 

Just as well we contributed to implementing some legislative initiatives (the Law on equal opportunities, the law project for cults, prevention of domestic violence, prevention of eradicating trafficking in human beings, the law for environment protection).