This page was translated from Romanian with the help of Claude (claude.ai), an artificial-intelligence assistant, and may contain translation errors. The reference text is the Romanian one. If you notice a mistake or an unnatural wording and would like to help us, please write to us at corecturi@civicsuport.ro. Thank you.
A public register of data about the administration
Romania has 3,181 administrative-territorial units (communes, towns, municipalities and the sectors of the capital). The data on each of them exist, but they are scattered: at the National Institute of Statistics (Institutul Național de Statistică, INS), at the Ministry of Finance (Ministerul Finanțelor), at the Permanent Electoral Authority (Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă), at the prefectures, on the town halls' websites. We are working on a register that brings them together, one page for each unit, with the source of every figure.
The register is not yet open to the public: we will open it only once the data have been checked.
Requests for public information
What is not published, we request. Since September 2026 we have sent requests under Legea 544/2001 (the Freedom of Information Act) to all 42 prefectures and, through them, to the town halls: the official contact details, the persons responsible for public information and for transparency in decision-making, and the acts by which they were appointed.
Every request and every answer is public: what we asked for, from whom, when, the legal deadline and what we received. We publish the answers in full, with handwritten signatures covered.
The register of requests and answers
The civic engagement guides
Our statute asks us to “develop civic spirit”. The most useful thing we can do here is to explain, with the legal basis at every step, what a citizen can do: set up an association, send a petition, collect signatures for an initiative.
What we have done so far
Not one of the actions below was ours alone. They were joint initiatives of several organisations, carried by people who gave their own time — volunteers without whom the association could have done nothing. We list them here because we were part of them, not because we did them in full. The press links are in Romanian.
March – May 2020
The protocol of 1 April 2020
“Vă ajutăm din Cluj” — “We help you from Cluj”
In the second week of the pandemic we started, together with VeDem Just and Clujul Sustenabil, a civic solidarity movement for the people who could no longer leave their homes. We were joined first by CPVP — the Centre for Peace and Violence Prevention and Asociația Daisler, and along the way by Beard Brothers and CERT Transilvania. By the end there were nine organisations, counting the two that supported us from outside the protocol.
That spring, seventy volunteers carried food and medicine to the people of Cluj over 65 and to the chronically ill. Each went through training before going into the field: help given badly carries the disease further instead of stopping it.
In April, a hundred food parcels went up to Giurcuța de Sus, a mountain village in the commune of Beliș. The hot meals for doctors and for the children admitted to the paediatric oncology ward were cooked by La Casa.
DIGI România — the telephones and the dispatch centre's
numbers, by sponsorship, from the first days.
Asociația Giurcuța de Sus, together with Compexit, the car
dealership on Calea Turzii — 11,000 lei for the parcels sent to Giurcuța de
Sus.
La Casa — the hot meals, which it also sponsored.
Fortech — a sponsorship for the movement.
Pro Vobis and Comunitatea Moto — they did not sign the protocol,
but they were there. From the motorcyclists we kept the joke of that spring:
the paracetamol comes by motorbike.
It all started from a protocol between the three founding associations, concluded electronically on 17 March 2020. On 1 April came the aggregation protocol, concluded by the five associations of the movement together with Beard Brothers and CERT Transilvania: the request platform, the call centre, the training of volunteers and the resources became everyone's.
The 2020 protocol remained an agreement between associations, in electronic form; no authority approved it. The 2022 one, below, was approved by the County Committee for Emergency Situations.
- Europa Liberă — „Vă ajutăm din Cluj!”
- ViaCluj TV — recrutare de voluntari și apel de donații
- ClujWebStory — Vă ajutăm din Cluj
FarmaVoluntar
With the Cluj College of Pharmacists, for the person in isolation who had no one to take their prescription to the pharmacy and bring the medicine back. Volunteer pharmacists answered the telephone, on lines from DIGI România; the medicine was carried to the door by the movement's volunteers.
- ClujLife — lansarea campaniei, 10 decembrie 2020
- cluju.ro — zeci de voluntari duc medicamente celor din carantină
- I Love You Cluj — voluntari duc medicamente clujenilor izolați
The protocol of 1 March 2022
“Ajutăm Ucraina” — “We help Ukraine”
Five days after the invasion began, on 1 March 2022, the associations and institutions of Cluj concluded a collaboration protocol, approved three days later by Decision no. 92 of 4 March 2022 of the Cluj County Committee for Emergency Situations. It was not a declaration of intent: it set out who does what, so that the help would not trip over its own feet.
The protocol started from what “Vă ajutăm din Cluj” had built during the pandemic: the platform that remembered the requests, the call centre, the volunteers and the way of working. From the signing onward all the partners used them. The dispatch centre for refugees began work on 11 March, with volunteers who spoke Ukrainian and Russian, and the SIM cards and telephone numbers were given, this time too, by DIGI România.
„Asociația Civic Suport, membru fondator al mișcării Vă ajutăm din Cluj — coordonează campania și comunicarea, asigură traduceri, pune la dispoziție call-centerul și dispeceratul proprii.”
“The Civic Suport Association, a founding member of the “Vă ajutăm din Cluj” movement — coordinates the campaign and communications, provides translations, and makes available its own call centre and dispatch service.” From the press release of the Prefect’s Office of Cluj County, 5 March 2022, on the approval of the protocol. →
The associations and organisations: Civic Suport, Beard Brothers, CERT Transilvania, O Masă Caldă, Caravana cu medici — Cluj branch, Asociația Voluntarilor Rescue and Response / Salvare și Răspuns 4x4, Ruscovan, the Association for the Integration of Immigrants and Refugees from MENA (AIR-MENA), Lions Club Genesis, the HORECA Cluj Employers' Organisation, Medical International Rescue and Fundația Părinți din România — PEDITEL.
The public institutions and professional bodies: the Prefect's Office — Cluj County, Cluj-Napoca City Hall, Cluj County Council, the “Avram Iancu” Emergency Inspectorate of Cluj County, the Romanian National Red Cross Society — Cluj branch and the Cluj College of Pharmacists.
Among the parties are also named Asociația Daisler, the Cluj Hoteliers' Association and the Cluj Bar Association, without a line in the list of signatures.
- Monitorul de Cluj — grupul de sprijin, cu cele 25 de organizații, 28 februarie 2022
- ziare.com — patru centre de donații pentru refugiați, 2 martie 2022
- Instituția Prefectului — protocolul a fost aprobat, 5 martie 2022
- Instituția Prefectului — centrul pentru refugiații în tranzit, 8 martie 2022
- Instituția Prefectului — dispeceratul devine activ
- Radio România Cluj — dispeceratul și înscrierea voluntarilor, 10 martie 2022
- cluju.ro — dispeceratul devine activ de vineri
- Instituția Prefectului — O Masă Caldă, 4 mai 2022
- Europa Liberă — voluntarele care vorbesc cu refugiații pe limba lor, 15 mai 2022
- The protocol of 1 April 2020, with telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and flat numbers covered (PDF)
- The protocol of 1 March 2022, without the list of signatures; telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and flat numbers covered (PDF)
- Decision no. 92 of 04.03.2022 of the Cluj County Committee for Emergency Situations, with the protocol annexed, on the Prefect's Office website
- The Prefect's Office press release on its approval
An organisation that says what it has done must be able to be checked, not believed at its word.
The Ukrainian Embassy’s diploma
A diploma of gratitude from the Embassy of Ukraine
On 16 July 2024, at the Prefect’s Office of Cluj County, the Ambassador of Ukraine to Romania, Ihor Prokopchuk, presented the association with a Diploma of Gratitude for the support given to Ukraine and to Ukrainians during the “Ajutăm Ucraina” campaign.
„Ambasada Ucrainei în România exprimă sinceră recunoștință Asociației CIVIC SUPORT Cluj-Napoca pentru sprijinul nobil și sincer acordat Ucrainei și ucrainenilor. Susținerea dumneavoastră personală în condițiile agresiunii militare a Federației Ruse împotriva Ucrainei este extrem de importantă pentru Statul Ucrainean și întreg poporul ucrainean.
Glorie Ucrainei! Glorie României! Glorie Eroilor!”
“The Embassy of Ukraine in Romania expresses its sincere gratitude to the CIVIC SUPORT Association of Cluj-Napoca for the noble and sincere support given to Ukraine and to Ukrainians. Your personal support under the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is extremely important for the Ukrainian State and the entire Ukrainian people. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Romania! Glory to the Heroes!”
There is no date on the diploma itself. The day is known from the press release of the Cluj County Council about the ambassador’s visit to Cluj on Tuesday, 16 July 2024, and from the photographs taken that afternoon.
