Ahead of the 2019 European elections, a Romanian politician made a disparaging remark about the truck driver profession. “They insisted on teaching him a lesson,” recalls Adriana Muresan, 56, a Romanian female truck driver living in Spain. airtight By phone. Angry Romanian truck drivers decided to vote en masse.
“But it wasn’t that simple,” Muresan said. For drivers on the road, it was inconvenient to take a truck into a nearby city to vote. They couldn’t just park and walk.
So Muresan asked Romanian Facebook groups who could give him a ride. A lot of volunteers came forward. Muresan started connecting truck drivers with Romanians living abroad. A Facebook group was created.
After the election, the group continued to operate. “We realized how strong we were, and we brought together the entire (Romanian) diaspora in Europe,” Muresan said. The drivers started sending each other invitations. “‘I’m going to Berlin this weekend. If anyone comes, I’ll buy them a drink.’ leftover. or ‘I’m in Germany and I’m in this area, if the driver wants to come fishing, I’ll invite him.’ When you live abroad, your truck is your home,” says Muresan. “And even though we’re integrated, we all miss our home.”
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Five years later, that one-time initiative has now become a mutual aid group with over 148,000 members: the RoOmenia Association Volunteers in Europe, where Romanians living abroad can help each other when they need help.
The types of services provided can be as simple as providing language and transportation assistance to a truck driver who needs to get to the dentist in a German town. But the help can also be significant: providing shelter to a temporarily homeless seasonal worker, helping someone struggling financially find work, or connecting abuse victims to relevant local organizations.
“There are great stories,” says Adriana Muresan. “We call ourselves ‘RoOmenia’ (a play on the words ‘humanity’ or ‘goodness’ in Romanian). It’s similar to ‘RuHumanity’ because it means giving without expecting anything in return. We want to change the country through our actions, and show that generous actions can change you. (…) We have planted a seed in Romania and I am very proud.”
Help due to pandemic
According to estimates, 5.7 million Romanians, or about a quarter of the total Romanian population, live abroad across Europe. For many Romanian families, life is a series of goodbyes, waiting for patients, and video calls. According to Save the Children Romania, about 13.8% of Romanian children, or more than 500,000 children, had one or both parents working abroad between 2021 and 2022.
“The only regret I have in life is taking my grandchildren away from their grandparents,” says Dragos, who has run a hardware store in Spain for 20 years. He belongs to a generation that suffers from guilt. In Romania, it’s called the “Italian syndrome,” the suffering of people who take care of other people’s relatives while neglecting their own.
The types of services provided can be as simple as providing language and transportation assistance to a truck driver who needs to get to the dentist in a German town.
Most of these people were invisible until the pandemic began. Then they became indispensable, says Adriana Muresan. In Germany, flight restrictions for seasonal workers were lifted to prevent the asparagus harvest from going to waste. It was during the pandemic that the Romanian immigrant group exploded.
“I had no idea there were so many seasonal workers in Romania,” said Muresan. “These people were left on the streets with nothing.” She recalled a shocking experience she had with 38 female seasonal workers in the Italian Alps who had been left “without shelter, without money, without a place to go, without transportation” during the lockdown. They had turned to online groups for help.
The response was overwhelming. “Romanians opened their doors, first from Italy, then from Spain,” Muresan said. “They kept calling me: ‘I have two houses, I have seven houses.’ ” The first thing she did was ask for the homeless Romanians’ IDs and take them to the consulate to make sure they had no criminal records. Eventually, “they were going to be taken in by someone,” she says frankly. “There were some cohabitation issues, but they were resolved.” Muresan estimates that about 1,500 people, mostly seasonal workers, were taken in.
Sabina Dinita is the founder of “Cutiei cu Medicamente” (Medicine Box). Founded in 2017, the organization, through the RoOmenia group, purchases and transports medicines that Romanian hospitals lack, especially oncology medicines for children. Sitting in a Bucharest café one evening in late June, Dinita explains how it works: “They (RoOmenia) have a really big network, so they always know if someone is leaving the country and returning to Romania. I buy medicines in Western Europe and bring them to Romania through volunteers who drive trucks.”
Romania is the EU country with the lowest per capita spending on cancer treatment (€70), well below Austria, Germany and France (over €250) and less than a quarter of Luxembourg (€294) (OECD figures).
Niku, a 45-year-old Romanian, discovered RoOmenia when a user on an online car forum asked for help and was directed to the group. “It’s funny how people like the bad stuff, but they also like the good stuff. You kind of unconsciously join in,” he muses. “It’s a huge community.” He says only a handful are real volunteers. “The rest have been like me so far. They’re the ones who have the lifeline. Just in case.”
Next Step: Confronting Loneliness
Adriana Muresan says RoOmenia currently works on a volunteer map. “When something happens in the area, we tag it.” Each country has a coordinator with hundreds of volunteers who respond to emergencies 24 hours a day via chat.
Muresan is often asked how she manages to get so many people involved. “It’s easy. Everyone has a place here, and they do what they want. If animals are your thing, we have that. If you’re interested in medicine for children, we have that. If you want to take out a cake for the truck driver who’s alone in the parking lot on Christmas, that’s possible. Everyone can do what they want and they can.”
Muresan is currently on permanent leave from her job on the road. But despite her obvious organizing skills, she says she has not been asked to go into politics. She has no intention of doing so. She says she would “lose her freedom.”
One of Romania’s most recent activities took place during the European elections on June 9. Group members provided transportation for German seasonal workers and some Danube boatmen to get to the polls. Muresan also recalls a much more difficult recent case involving the consulate: providing assistance to a Romanian who had been abused in Abu Dhabi.
Muresan explains that the group only approves requests that are “urgent, critical and verified.” The goal is to prevent fraud and avoid wasting volunteers’ time.
RoOmenia’s next campaign targets Romanian domestic workers. The idea is for volunteers living nearby to meet them for coffee and a chat. “These people need to speak and talk in their own language,” explains Adriana Muresan. “To heal their soul and their loneliness a little bit.”
