Mureș Community Foundation was put together by a group of nine young people who wanted to involve local companies and people, especially the young, in the development of the community they live in. It all started in 2010 and only one year later, in 2011, the initiative group established itself formally as a community foundation and started to organize their first events. The first one was Swimathon.ms, a fundraising event that has been held every year since 2011.
In 2012, the Mureș Community Foundation started YouthBank, a youth responsibility program, which saw, since the first edition, many initiatives from high school students in Mureș. In the same year, the foundation also established the Reghin Community Fund, whose main goal is to stimulate the philanthropic spirit and community development actions in this region as well.
A year later, the members of the Mureș Community Foundation have developed a new program to provide funding to local initiatives, namely the Community Card, a concept borrowed from other community foundations, where it has been successfully implemented. They had the same success in Mureș, where, in the first year, more than 2,600 card holders contributed over 7,000 lei to the Foundation.
Since its inception, the Mureș Community Foundation has promoted cycling not only as a means of transportation, but also as a lifestyle. However, the team has realized that a mere bike rack would not be enough to change mentalities. Thus, the Foundation team focused their efforts in more directions. The team began with the participation in and then the take-over of the organization of Critical Mass – a periodic meeting of cyclists in the region – in order to take the pulse of the community; they continued with the creation of a database and surveying cyclists to find out the problems they are facing, and only then they began implementing programs.
In 2015, the Foundation mobilized the cyclist community at the “Pedaling for a good cause” event and raised the funds needed to start the Velo Academy – a series of cycling education courses for teenagers aged 14 to 18.
“We came to realize that we couldn’t change the mentality of 55-65 year-olds, and it would be much better to start with the kids. To educate them and teach them to use the bicycle and be more active”, says Sándor Gal, executive director of the Foundation. In two years, more than 1,700 students from Mureș participated in the courses organized by the Community Foundation, and in 2016 an equally large number of students from seven more cities came to these courses.
Mureș Community Foundation brings together the people and companies that want what’s good for the community, mobilizing the locals and getting them involved.
This “work” principle can best be transposed by the funds invested in local projects., amounting to 1,210,049 lei (until 2017). This could not have happened if the people, who care about the community in which they live, were not involved.