Christmas in Romania

During the Communist era Christmas carols were banned. Our Romanian friends tell that during the Communist era, they would go down to their basement, cover all the windows, and softly sing Christmas carols with their family members.
The Opera had an annual winter concert, where they could play 'winter songs,' but not Christmas songs. In 1980, Dumitru Farcas closed the concert with an arrangement of a traditional Romanian folk carol, "O, ce veste minunata"  (O, what wonderful news).  Everyone in the theatre stood while he played; no one sang for that was illegal.  But it was the first time the carol was played publicly in 30 years.  He got in trouble, but because he was a well-known performer, he was not imprisoned.
When Communism fell, the Opera invited Mr. Farcas to play "O, ce veste minunata," which he has done every year since.  We attended the annual Christmas Concert at the Opera.  When Dumitru Farcas came on stage, the audience gave him a standing ovation before he even played.  
Here's a YouTube video of Stefan Hrusca, a Romanian folk singer, performing it:
'O ce veste minunata'

That's about as good as it gets

The last class was the best one I've had in Romania.  What made it so good?

Well, the first hour and a half, my class met with another class so I could guest lecture on a subject that I am passionate about: social entrepreneurship. Main point:  Social entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs with a social mission, connect the social service needs of the community with donors' interests and values.  Sub-points:

1. While profit may be motivating to entrepreneurs, the mission is central with social entrepreneurs: Making a difference in community needs.
2. Social entrepreneurs need to thoroughly understand the needs of the community; graduate school is a good context to understand needs.
3. Social entrepreneurs need to know the best practices to meet those needs; grad school is a good context to learn what works.
4. Social entrepreneurs have to show impact, how their program makes a difference, so program evaluation is a necessity.
5. Donors, people with money, are people just like the rest of us who want to make the world a better place.  Their skill is in making or managing wealth; they need us people who are skilled in understanding the factors causing the social problems and in designing interventions that have an impact on the social problems.
6. Social entrepreneurs show initiative to understand the problem, create a solution that makes an impact on the problem, and communicate with potential donors. Don't just stand there: mission driven action.
7. An untapped donor resource in Romania is Corporate Social Responsibility; many multinationals are relocating to Romania and few social service agencies are partnering with them to make Romania a better place.

Students were engaged in discussion, had some good ideas. I hope some of them start new NGOs to address community needs; that's my desired impact.

I then went to my class, Program Evaluation. They were supposed to attend the guest lecture, but another professor kept them late and they decided to wait in the hall.  However, I had high attendance day, six of eight students.  Two students were there for the first time; it's only the next to last class of the semester. As I arrived in class I got a text from my guest NGO speaker that she was not able to come, so I created a "Plan B" on the fly.

Following the "Show one, do one, teach one" pedagogy, I asked the students who had attended previously to teach the two newbies how to analyze a NGO's mission, objectives, program activities, and intended outcomes in a logic model.  I passed out brochures from NGOs that I have collected, and based on some pretty scant information in the brochures, they created logic models (week 2 topic). They presented the logic models they created; like, stand up at the front of the class and talk about what they know.  Then we discussed how to evaluate if they are ready for a program evaluation (week 3 topic), and decided that two could potentially benefit from a program evaluation, the third would benefit from clarifying its program intent and objectives.

Then two students, one newbie and one who has come half the time, told me they had to leave early (an hour early).  "Let me have ten more minutes and let's see what we could do to evaluate one of these programs" (tonight's topic). 

It was pretty easy to do a performance evaluation on a photo exhibition to support a domestic violence prevention NGO (how many entries, how many visitors), and more difficult to do an impact evaluation of whether their objectives were met (content analysis of themes of the photos to evaluate if they communicated non-violence; response cards from visitors to evaluate the extent of supportive attitudes).  The key is "ease of use" matched to the "program intent." Hey, in ten minutes, we had a pretty good evaluation plan.  And everyone left early and happy.
 

Good teaching/learning makes me want to dance!

I'm definitely reinforcing "the glass is half full" mode in my mindset; my experience of higher education here has lowered my expectations.   I'm sure there are good reasons for all of the "half empty" behaviors, I just haven't learned to appreciate them.  Enough of these nattering nabobs of negativity!

• I had students who showed interest in what I had to offer!  
• I had students who did what I asked in class!  
• I had students who talked about what they are learning!
• I got to understand what students understand!
• Teaching/learning was happening! Can't have one without the other.

As Jack Nicholson said in the movie, "that's about as good as it gets, folks."

European Premier of "Hand Held," the story of the Romanian Children's Relief

We attended the European premier of "Hand Held," a documentary about Mike Carroll, the Boston Globe photographer who brought the Romanian children's AIDS epidemic to light, then founded a non-profit to help the abandoned children of Romania.  It is a documentary directed by Don Hahn, the producer of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.  It's got Oscar buzz, so watch for it to come out at your local art-flick theatre.

We had breakfast with Mike Carroll, who was staying at our hotel.  We had already decided to attend the screening based on a poster we had seen.   He is a sincere, down-to-earth kind of guy. He invited us to visit their operations next week in Bistriza, a town about two hours from Cluj.

Movie Trailer: Hand Held

The most compelling scene of the movie for me was Mike talking about becoming emotionally attached to a young boy, about 18 months old.  Usually, as he explains, the camera creates some emotional distance, a necessary part of covering difficult subjects.  However, after shooting at one orphanage, this boy caught his attention and he stared playing with him.  For several days, when he finished shooting at this hospital he returned to play with the boy.  He talked with his wife about adoption, and they decided to pursue it.  When he returned to the hospital the next day, the boy was not there.  The nurse explained that he had tested positive for AIDS and was moved to another hospital. When Don went to the other hospital they had no record of the child; even if he had located him, the US government would not allow an international adoption of a HIV+ child.

Here's the history behind the movie:  Romania's Dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (Tchow-chesk-you) was deposed and killed on Christmas day, 1989.  The Berlin Wall fell in November, 1989, and Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (political openness that led to Soviet media reporting critical stories about the government) and perestroika (a political restructuring that decentralized the economic control and led to economic crisis) led to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

During the 70s and 80s, Ceauşescu saw building factories to export manufactured goods as the key to Romania's future.  He uprooted the rural, agricultural population and moved them to the cities to work in factories.  The classic Communist block buildings were a symbol of the forced urbanization of the population and the massive building campaigns.  The officials in charge of building these buildings figured that the peasants didn't have running water or sewer where they came from, so why should they build that into the 10 story buildings?  As a result, people used the stairwells for their toilet, so disease was rampant in the cities.

Ceauşescu couldn't bring enough peasants from the countryside to work in all the factories he wanted to build.  So he implemented what Newsweek called "overplanned parenthood," a scheme to increase the Romanian population by making pregnancy a state policy; childlessness was considered "desertion."  Each family was expected to have at least five children.  Gynecologists were sent into the factories monthly to conduct unannounced gynecological screenings, ostensibly to check for cervical cancer, but also to report any pregnant women to State Security (called the "menstrual police").  Women who couldn't have children were docked part of their monthly wage as a penalty.

Massive food shortages at the time, the Ministry of Health recommended 1,000 calorie/day as a healthy diet, and diseased conditions among the poorest workers insured a high percentage of low birth weight babies with many complications.  Many poor women, who had children at home to take care of, would have to choose between caring for the sick newborn or the healthier toddlers.  So many families left their newborns at the hospital where they were at least fed, clothed, and sheltered.  This spawned the nationwide chain of orphanages, where the children were warehoused in deplorable conditions.

To address the food shortages and malnutrition of the children in orphanages, someone thought it would be a good idea to use blood transfusions as a source of nutrition.  To insure a steady source of "donated" blood, soldiers and aailors were required to give blood twice a year.  The Romanian military was active in Angola, Romania's largest trade partner at the time, and brought the AIDS infection home with them. The forced blood donations that were used for the orphanages created the Romanian AIDS epidemic.

In addition, Ceauşescu closed all the nursing schools, as the only thing nurses did was what the doctors told them to do.  So why do they need to go to school to learn how to follow orders?  Public health nurses were issued two syringes per year, which they used for the mandatory immunization program.  So in addition to those in the orphanages, children in healthy families contracted AIDS and Hepatitis as well.  Children sick with these diseases were quarantined in special hospitals, which in reality were death wards.

As a result, there is a whole generation of children with AIDS in Romania, who are now young adults.  There are many Romanian NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to serve the needs of these people.  They maintain their health by participating in large scale clinical trials of the newest AIDS drugs.

I interviewed representatives and beneficiaries from one such NGO in our region.  The term they use to refer to themselves has a wonderful ambiguity in translation, "I am a positive person."  And they went on to talk about how they take one day at a time, making the most of each good day, because you don't know when the bad days will come.  Good advice for the rest of us.

Drinking Palinka with the rock stars

Tonight I had a surreal experience.  The hotel manager where we are staying in  Bucharest invited me to have a glass of palinka before I go to bed.  I've learned, in Romania, you don't turn down Palinka.  It's a strong alcohol, usually homemade, and it is offered as a token of friendship.  To turn it down is rude.

So I go with the hotel manager down to the hotel restaurant to have palinka and talk with the hotel manager about his life story.  We joined three other men at the table having wine or palinka or beer.  Very Romanian men.  Telling stories and jokes about women; teasing one another like old friends.  They talked mostly in Romanian, and occasionally translated for me, especially the jokes. 

Bogdan Bradu, vocalist for Phoenix

After palinka and wine, they tell me that they are musicians.  "Have you heard of Phoenix?" Not really.  "We're the most famous rock group in Romania, we were contemporaries of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles." No, you gotta be kidding!

We told more jokes.  One of the guys told a story on the other about "speaking Russian" or French, or German, or Italian, even though he doesn't know the language.  He just spoke random sounds in the accent of the target language.  Pretty passable characature  of an accent. They had a funny story about impressing some easily impressed girl with their language abilities. 

They passed a traditional Romanian hat around, putting it on one another's head.  Of course, I had to have a round of the funny hat game, too.

And I asked them if they were able to tour during Communism, still thinking they were pulling my leg.    They were banned from the concert halls, but started selling out stadiums, which were controlled by the sports clubs at the time, not the communists.  Then in 1974, they packed themselves into the speakers in a shipment to Germany, and defected from communist Romania and had a successful life in Germany.  Someone pulled out an iPod and played some of their music, "That's one of ours. We're playing an unplugged concert here in Bucharest next weekend with the symphony orchestra and chorale.  It will be quite nice. You ought to come!"

Tourist wearing traditional Romanian hat

You were in Cluj just a few weeks ago.  I saw the posters. "Yeah, that was a sell-out. Are you going to be in Bucharest for the week?  It'll be great." 

OMG.   THIS IS THE REAL DEAL. THIS IS SO COOL!

Nicu_Covaci FO PHOENIX
A Music Sample

Learning about the Romanian Juvenile Justice System

A discussion broke out in class last night.  Since it was in Romanian, and only one student felt confident enough with her English to translate, I only got the highlights.  But observing the energetic (heated) conversation, I can surmise my class discussion got wrapped up in some leftover issues.  But hey, it's better than the cow eyes I have been getting from students when I ask questions in class.

We were discussing how to incorporate family therapy interventions into the juvenile justice process.  This was a class on Treatment and Rehabilitation for Juvenile Delinquents. Students from three Master's programs in the Faculty of Social Work take this class: Evidence-Based Clinical Social Work; Social Work with Justice System, Probation, and Mediation; and Children's Rights.  The Justice students were seated on the left side of class while the Clinical Social Work students were seated on the right. We were discussing when in the arrest-arraignment-court  process would be the best time to intervene to rehabilitate the youth.

The first heated discussion broke out among three MSW Justice System students about factual details about the justice procedures.  It looked to me that these students were engaging in a one-up-man-ship of "I know better than you do," about tiny details of the justice process.

Throughout the discussion, the Justice students engaged with vigor while the Clinical Social Work students stared at the floor. 

Some things that I learned about the juvenile justice system:  There is no separate juvenile justice system in Romania.  Juvenile criminal cases are tried in the general court system on the docket with adult criminal trials and civil suits.  Youth 14 and over can be tried for serious or persistent criminal activity, and youth over 16 are sentenced to serve in the Romanian prison system.  A second debate broke out among the three students about whether there was a separate prison for youth or they were kept in a special wing of an adult prison.  Most commonly youth crimes are dealt with by the police by holding the youth at the police station for 12 to 15 hours in hopes that the harsh experience will deter any future misconduct.  That's the extent of Juvenile Offender Intervention and Rehabilitation. 

They said that the prosecutor decides, based on the severity of the crime and the evidence, whether to bring charges and take the case to court.  If the prosecutor decides not to move forward, charges are dropped and apparently no record is kept of the arrest.  However, they said that the police stations are small enough that the police officers will remember which youth have been in the station repeatedly, and repeated criminal offenses will be sufficient to bring the charges to court.  So it seems like the police officers also have a great deal of discretion whether to collect evidence and inform the prosecutor of the offense history.  I don't know how closely the police officers work with the prosecutors.  But it seems clear to me, from the student information, that the police officers exercise considerable discretion and the prosecutors exercise considerable discretion and most juvenile offenses get treated by the "hold them and make them sweat" intervention.

It would be an interesting dissertation to examine the effectiveness of the "make them sweat" intervention.

The students said with confidence that the police or the prosecutors had no authority to require any rehabiltative intervention as a condition of whether the charges would move forward.  They only had authority to bring charges or to release with no conditions and no record.  The American system of deferred adjudication, in which the charges would be dropped if no subsequent criminal act occurred and the offender completed some rehabilitative activities, was a foreign concept to them.

I also asked the students in the Social Work with Justice System program to try to get me an invitation to meet a prosecutor, police officer who deals with juveniles, or attend a juvenile court hearing.

The third heated discussion to break out was over the value of intervention: A student expressed a variation of "they made their choices and have to deal with the consequences.  Lock them up and let them rot.  Rehabilitation is a waste of time."  It certainly ended that round of discussion, and I did one of those, "OK, let's move on to the next topic"  responses.  It certainly was an minority opinion in a room full of do-gooder students wanting to learn Treatment and Rehabilitation for Juvenile Delinquents.  But I imagine it was a common sentiment among Romanian society, just as it is among many of the "tough on crime" crowd in American society.

The theory that is behind my line of questions is the Sequential Intercept Model of Juvenile Offender Rehabilitation.  Fancy title for an approach that looks at the procedures that take place after the police are called through the court hearing to identify the places in the process that mental health needs can be "Intercepted."  The underlying assumption, not shared in the classroom, is that it a good thing to divert youth from the justice system toward some interventions that enable them to change their life direction.

The assumptions of the American juvenile justice system, since the first Juvenile Court Act of 1899, is that it is in the culture's best interests to allow youth offender to grow out of this difficult phase.  American juvenile justice process leans heavily on deferred adjudication, which if the youth stays to the straight and narrow for 90 days or 6 months, all charges are dropped and there is no record of the incident.   Often the deferred adjudication will have conditions of mental health counseling to assist the youth and family in making the necessary changes. 

I concluded the class by addressing the (uncomfortably) silent Clinical Social Work students, "Your friends in the criminal justice system (nodding to the left side of the class) need to know that you can help them by intervening with troubled youth and diverting them from a life of crime.  They seem to think intervention is not possible.  You social workers need to show the justice system that it is possible and it saves the state a lot more money to intervene early in a youthful criminal's career than to incarcerate them after they develop a long list of crimes.  You social workers need to work together with your professional association to get your politicians to understand what you can do and pass laws that allow police and prosecutors to use what you have to offer."

First Snow in Cluj

Friday after Thanksgiving we woke up to two inches of fresh snow.  Nancy woke me, "Get up get up, come look come look."  It was like her first Christmas morning.

Snow out our front door

So we put on our warmest clothes and went for a walk before it started melting.  We wandered through the neighborhoods until we found ourselves at the Botanical Garden.  We went in to enjoy the untouched snow in the gardens.

Of course, Dan had to try out his traditional Romanian cold weather clothing.  This includes hand-felted leg warmers  that you wrap around your ankles and a conehead hat made of heavy wool.  This is the outfit that the funeral procession pointed and laughed at in an earlier post (theyre-laughing-at-my-legs).  I only noticed one or two people staring at my legs today.  They are much more discrete in the city.

Dan in his traditional Romanian cold weather clothing

Nancy in the Botanical Garden