When Children Build Straighter- Anda Culișir

I'm Anda, I'm a teacher at Ghibu highschool and on top of that I'm also the leader of a volunteer club for my high schooler. We don't do the classic volunteering that you usually see in schools, and we don't really get to go to events organized by others where we're told exactly what to do. We have our own club, the projects are ours, and the children are my partners.

We always start from projects that come from children's ideas, from real needs that we identify in the community, and that's the beauty, actually, that I don't know the recipe either. And either it works or it doesn't, but it's ours. And once a year, I transform.

Generally, she is the classroom teacher, but once a year, together with the project, its needs and the children, we transform ourselves into event organizers, NGO experts, activists, furniture builders, whatever it takes to make this project work, but the idea is always the same. To help someone in a real way and to learn as much as possible from this through non-formal education and the experience. Many times we succeed and it's perfect, many times we don't and that’s ok too.

We try not to cultivate the mistake too much. We argue, we make up, we somehow assume the mistake as a group and, in the end, it's our project. I mean, we decide what we want to do, how far we take it, we take the experience of the older generations, we integrate them, we take the ideas of the smarter children, we integrate them.

It's such a very organic process of growing projects and quite chaotic, but we push ourselves to do more and better. We hold ourselves accountable. And then the project is, in fact, their idea, their work, their journey, their learning, and I'm lucky that they have me by their side so I can learn something too.

The project we're working on now is called Ethnicity, it's a multicultural festival, it's grown a lot lately and I'll give you this example. Have you been? Have you been to Ethnicity? I guess so, that's why you're applauding. I hope you have been.

It all started four years ago, we were at a meeting at the club, we didn't really know what we wanted to do and a kid came on the bus and said, well, I came on the bus and I heard two foreign languages, one I had no idea what it was. And so we started a natural conversation between us, we realized that Cluj is full, full of cultures and people from other parts, but who maybe know too little about each other, I don't know, and the kids probably knew almost nothing. They even told me that there aren't many places for high school students to go and meet people who live other lives, have other traditions, have other cultures.

And, so, from one idea, from another, I knew that there were cultural projects in Cluj, but generally they were organized by separate cultures or by students and for a small audience that was already informed about that. So we came up with this idea to do a project that would not necessarily be cultural showcases, but more of a living space for interaction. We didn't know anyone, we started calling, asking around, and that's how we got to know a nice group of Cameroonians who were workers on the construction site that was renovating our very high school, Dian from Burundi who lived behind the school, the Armenian Karen who is a producer at TVR, Aşkân who is from Turkey and sang folk songs in “Old”, where the kids would gather when they were slacking off, and we invited them all, we invited them for coffee, we invited them to come and participate, not as artists on a stage with paid tickets, but to come among themselves, to have fun with their community, to bring whatever they want there, music, dance, whatever, and to welcome us so that we could learn something too.

And they all said yes, and that's how Ethnicity was born, there were five cultural evenings in Insomnia four years ago, each evening focused on a different culture. We had an audience there, it was us, there were friends of ours, parents, Insomnia customers who didn't know what was happening to them, but they liked it and I didn't want them to leave, an audience from the street because they heard something cool, they were smiling, they came and I want them to come the next day, and the cultures who were having such a good time at their evening, that I want them to come the next day, to meet the others. It grew organically, basically.

We also had an old closet, a closet with stories, we said, we populated it with objects, but they weren't museum objects or ethnic objects, they were people's personal objects, when they gave them to us to display. Așkân's hat, with which he came from Istanbul when he fled after attempted coups. It was Nicolas's puc, who was a French landscape painter temporarily settled in Cluj, and who played hockey for a team from Harghita.

And all the objects told real stories, they had a QR code, the children took interviews, sat with people for coffee, wrote a story, rewrote it to tell the story as clearly as possible and not make mistakes. The children also did a little organizing, a little sponsorship. We were a team without much experience in this kind of projects. The most important thing is that we learned a lot about people, about cultures and traditions, and we learned somehow vividly, not from textbooks, but directly from the source.

And this thing had a very good feedback, we wanted to continue it, so the next year I said how about we go out on the street a bit, two, three stands, I had no idea, I had no idea what approvals we needed, I took the kids, we went to the city hall. We had about seven minutes allocated, they turned into fortyfive minutes, two canceled meetings and an “all ears effect” from the city hall, which started calling other actors from Cluj. They called the Center for International Cooperation from UBB, they called the Patriarch, they called the International Women's Club and everyone started calling each other and everyone like that, nodding their heads, finally, let's put everything together, yes, let's make an urban living room, like that, for everyone.

And we had three weeks of work for this, coordinated by the children. We had lecturers, we had NGOs, we had community members, we put everyone at the same table and the children coordinated everything, because they knew what the backbone of the project was, the basic idea that we didn't want to lose under any circumstances, and we learned to also do intercultural communication, because one way you work with a cultural center, another way with a community that is not structurally organized. And then we were invited to participate in the “Zilele Clujului” event, it was the second edition, it was a very difficult decision, because it's very difficult to explain to a child that, yes, you're doing sharing of ownership, but you'll be absorbed and maybe it won't be called Ethnicity anymore and it won't be your project anymore, and to explain it to a ninth-grade child, who feels like he's done something so important, it's difficult.

But the kids still came and said: we had to do a project in which we celebrated multiculturalism… how do we organize an event three weeks before for the cultures that are not equal as residents of Cluj.

And that's how these kids make all the decisions, with maturity and empathy and a clarity that always leaves me and the other adults around them speechless. And now the project is big, it's in its fourth edition, it's on Kogălnicianu and Marton streets, we have dozens of cultures involved, we have stands for each, we have a stage, a cooking corner, an arts corner and we do all the work ourselves. I mean, everything.

We are also organizers and volunteers during our own event. Months before, the children build street furniture and plan the street. Other children go with the electricians and learn to run electricity all over the street.

Other kids are learning to upload invoices to SPV, now I understand what that is, because we have an association, you don't realize how structured it is. They are learning to work with accountants, to apply for non-reimbursable financing, to negotiate with the city hall for each community. And this thing creates a vibe that spreads to everyone around and manages to grow the project very quickly.

They learn a lot of autonomy, they learn resilience, they learn responsibility. They learn to deal with crisis situations and solve problems on the spot, but I think most of all they learn that they can. And I was called to speak at this event when I had just come out of the fever of the project and I literally couldn't think how I couldn't do justice to the children, because in class when I give them a 3, the children certainly don't think I'm doing them justice.

A kid who hasn't seen his girlfriend in a week is sitting there working on the street, he doesn't think I'm doing him justice, and I did not do justice to Doru either, because I did not him the speech on time, I'll tell you honestly. I didn't do it, I was caught up in this. So I stayed and went to the street during the event to actually remind myself why we're doing it.

That's how I realized that, yes, we do cultures justice, because I managed to talk to Giovanni from Paraguay, who came to Cluj Student and after seven months of only speaking English, he ended up by chance in our last year's edition and realized how numerous is the Latino community in Cluj: from Ecuador and Venezuela and Colombia, and he was, like, ”yes, I have a family!”. I managed to see how, this year in the rain, everyone was dancing together with the children from Romanoilo. I managed to see how everyone was sharing stories with the Palestinian community and they could enjoy themselves together and leave the tragedies that were happening behind, in the background, for three days.

And I was able to see Ahmed and Abdul from Syria turn the music down and stop dancing with everyone else so that the Greek community can be validated and seen. And they go and get together and start dancing zorba with the 60-year-old ladies from Greece, Muslims and Orthodox dancing together. And I was able to see Karen, the Armenian, hug and kiss and cry with Aşkân the turk, who sang him a song dedicated in Armenian about genocide, a genocide that killed almost over a million people and that is still not recognized by Turkey and that affected four generations of Armenians.

And I realize that, yes, we are doing them justice. I think we are doing justice to the audience in Cluj, people who may be less informed and who realize that, yes, this is the reality we live in, in which we have to accept each other's absurdity. Thank you, Sandu! And I think we are doing justice to the children too.

I sat and thought about it, I asked them too. And they, from their perspective as children, said, well, yes, even if you're a ninth-grade kid, yes, you can still find your place. ”I'll learn about physics with the electricians, and I'll figure out how to get a better grade on the test.”

”I'm learning about maths by calculing the material needed for street furniture.”

”I find my place here!”

And then I sat and thought and, yes, we really do justice to children through these kinds of projects.

And I think we do justice because we see them. We see them at an age when it is essential to see them, at 14, at 15, at 16, at 17, when now I would discover the way and when they grow up being seen and validated by me as an authority, as a teacher. But together with me, by an entire city, by a city hall, they are sitting at the table there with adult and important people and their ideas matter and their organization matters, they are the bosses.

These people, when they become adults in real life, they won't have that anxiety about being validated at work. They don't fight for things like that anymore, because they know exactly who they are, they know what they're good at, they know what they don't like, they know what they've experienced, they know exactly how to deal with a mistake. And that gives them a starting point where they know how to do justice to others, they know how to demand their rights and make a better civil society, that they can look at the people around them and they can do things that really matter.

And that's it, I think that's how we do justice and this project does justice to me too because I always remember why I'm a teacher and why this thing is important. Thank you very much!