Iași Community Foundation aims to bring together good people, good ideas for the community, and worthwhile causes that support the transformation of Iași into a city that we can pride on. The joy of donating, as well as philanthropy and volunteering, find a warm home in the Iași Community Foundation, from which the entire local community benefits in one way or another.
Established in 2010 with the efforts of an initiative group mobilized through a call on social media, the Iași Community Foundation grew together with the ones who started it, but also with those for whom it was born. In its first year of existence, several city redevelopment projects have been carried out, such as the Urban Renewal Fund supported by E.ON IT. The field of urban renewal became a tradition in Iași, being embraced especially by local entrepreneurs, such as Transgor Logistik.
Iași Community Foundation also provides the citizens with a series of funds aimed at involving them in the community, by providing funding to those who come up with community improvement initiatives, and by providing scholarships to outstanding young people. One such example is the FCI Scholarship Fund, a program started in 2012, which provided financial support, mentoring and counseling to more than 180 students, until 2016.
The Centric Scholarship Fund – a joint initiative of Centric IT Solutions Romania and the Iași Community Foundation, is the first program run by a local company in which the team directly engages both in the creation of a youth scholarship fund and in the professional and personal development counseling for the scholarship recipients.
In 2015, ten IT companies established the Științescu Fund together with the Iași Community Foundation and the Romanian-American Foundation, to support the non-conformist creativity of exact sciences. At its first edition, 10 projects have received backing, while at the next one, 13 of the 59 projects submitted have been selected.
As of 2015, Iași CF organizes two sporting fundraising events. The first, started in 2012, is the Swimathon, where 322 swimmers raised 188,053 for 29 projects in 2016 alone. “Cross for Schools” is the largest running fundraising event, organized for the benefit of several schools in Iași, and in its two editions (2015 and 2016), 1666 runners managed to raise a total of over 222,000 lei.
“What we do is encourage the people of Iași to engage in the problems of their community, to want to change the things that have been the same for years. We offer financial support in the form of microfinancing to implement these ideas and we are joining them during their implementation to ensure that they will be able to carry out their next initiatives by themselves”, says Ciprian Păiuș, executive director of Iași CF.