6 Country Reports on Youth Work - Jugendpolitik in Europa

Three years ago, an annual project was started at national level: “the Week of the
Volunteers”, when volunteering activities, NGO fairs, debates and meetings are organised in
as many Romanian cities as possible.
Regarding the budget of youth work at local level, four main sources could be identified:
Table 59: Sources of budget in Romanian municipalities
106
National budget provided by the National Authority for Youth to the four counties in 2006 € 108,538
National budget for non-governmental youth associations € 26,906
Local budget € 176,915
European funds from the 2007 “Youth in Action” programme for the four counties € 130,458
Total € 442,817
It can be stated that youth work at local level is financed by a mix of European, national and
local funds. It should be mentioned that applying for public money involves a great deal of
paper work in all cases. In addition, the NAY funds are distributed among institutions in very
small budgets, so that NGOs often do not consider it worth applying for them. Thus many
small or start-up youth organisations benefit from these calls for projects.
The number of youth workers could be identified only for public institutions and for the
County Youth Departments:
Table 60: Ratio of male to female youth workers in Romanian municipalities
County
name
Director of
CYD
Youth worker
/ counsellor
Camps
counsellor
Administrative
staff
M F M F M F M F
Alba 1 1 1 1 1 5
Bihor 1 1 30 32
Cluj 1 2 1 1 5
Sibiu 1 3 2+1 1 1 9
TOTAL 3 1 2 6 2 2 16
TOTAL
Eight youth workers – two men and six women – could be identified as youth workers. They
work as “youth counsellors”, i.e. they are responsible for organising and monitoring youth
activities and for providing information to young people. This represents a low ratio of
workers to the youth activities provided, as these persons are responsible for youth activities
in both urban and rural settings in the entire county. An example: the three youth workers in
Cluj county are responsible for 170,000 young people aged from 15 to 29 years. All youth
workers are full-time employees, and most of them have a professional qualification and
more than five years’ experience in youth work.
Their work is complemented by the work of non-governmental youth organisations, where it
was not possible to identify the number of youth workers. One of the reasons for this is that