Think about your town. Walking or driving through it. Think critically. You love your town, right? But perhaps there are things that could be better? Would you be proud to leave it as it is to your kids?
Unless you are the Mayor these questions might seem a bit frustrating. Change is not easy and getting everything we want done now is often a bit unrealistic (even for most Mayors I know). But change comes in little ways. And I guarantee there are others in your community who see the same things you do. They are angry about the broken equipment in the park. They are angry about the lack of computers in the school. They are angry.
Asa, si? How do you go from “asta este” to fixing? It takes you, or an NGO that you trust in your community taking leadership. Someone has to stand up and say ‘this isn’t good enough for me, my family, or this community.’
Then what? They say ‘nothing in life is free.’ And that is pretty true. And until now, one of the main problems in getting people to stand up and say ‘I’m gonna do this’ has been the lack of money. It is not that you and your neighbors don’t want to do something but do something with what resources? Without resources it is almost impossible to think of things that you might change.
One of my favorite authors compares this to being able to come to the concept of a house when you don’t know what a hammer is. Without a hammer, you can’t build a house. So without resources, how can you think about fixing the park? Sure, you can think about it… but it makes the vision seem so impossible it is hard to go beyond thinking.
That’s why tools like Bursa Binelui are so important. One thing that has been holding back the NGOs and citizens from solving problems all across Central and Eastern Europe is a lack of tools that make it easy for you to gather the resources you need to solve the problems around you. Bursa Binelui makes it easier to do that. Of course, nothing is a silver bullet.
You will need to help people understand what you want to change and invite them to be a part of it through their support but you are no longer stopped at just thinking ‘you know, if only we had a little bit of money, this town could really use a…’
We could all do more. We all have a responsibility to take leadership sometimes and make our time and place better.
Check out Bursa Binelui. Look around. Figure out what you will do.
Chris Worman
