Bees for Life

Pocreaca, Romania - Romania's impoverished rural communities have plenty of ideas to break the shackles of poverty, but they often lack the money to get the ideas off the ground. In the small village of Pocreaca, a five-hour drive outside of Bucharest, the local  association of honey producers demonstrates how sweet grass roots development can be when the Government takes genuine interest in what is happening in the far-flung regions of the country.

In Pocreaca, a small town in Iasi County a five-hour drive outside of Bucharest, a small house stands erect with concrete walls and a clean layer of turquoise paint. Unlike other buildings in this poor rural community, this house has no improvised annexes hanging off the main building, and no makeshift solutions to structural problems. It is built entirely with new materials and according to sound architectural practice.

Inside, freshly cemented floors lead to a production area off the main corridor. “We will soon process honey on a much bigger scale,” says Silviu Iordache, proudly pointing to a set of new machines made of corrosion resistant chrome and nickel. The shiny apparatus processes and packages large quantities of locally produced honey.

Mr. Iordache is the representative of an association of local apiarists, which owns housing and equipment. He says that by partially automating the honey production, the small rural community will be able to expand its honey business beyond the town’s borders, and reach out to regional and national markets. The new facility will also bring much needed employment to the village by creating five full-time positions to assist with the production process. Eventually, says Mr. Iordache, he wishes to see the association’s honey on the shelves of supermarkets across the European Union.

What distinguishes this facility from other honey processing enterprises in Romania is that the building and the equipment were financed by a government-sponsored program. The “APIS MOLD 2005” apiary association is one of 965 community development projects that were awarded grants by the Romanian government to provide small communities with the necessary start-up capital for community-driven business ventures. “Poor communities in rural Romania have very limited access to sources of income and financing, and most communities lack the entrepreneurial abilities and skills to generate income of any kind,” explains Adrian Medeleanu, resident representative of the Romanian Social Development Fund. He says that in most cases, it’s not the ideas that are lacking, but the money.

The notion of financing local community projects through a state-sponsored grant facility is a fairly new approach to community development, which was largely unknown in Romania just over a decade ago. The situation began to change gradually after 1989 to the point where, in 1996, the Romanian Social Development Fund (RSDF) was established to tackle rural poverty by involving the affected communities in the reform process. Mr. Medeleanu says that community participation in a project provides for more seamless implementation as people tend to take greater ownership of the project and its outcome. “The local population knows best the needs and opportunities within the community."

RSDF’s supra-regional structure and its expertise in implementing projects both at the regional and local level can provide Romania with the type of intermediate body that will be able to absorb and channel EU structural funds in the future. Building capacity at the institutional level is particularly important for new EU member countries like Romania, which can hugely benefit from the financial aid that the European Union makes available to its less developed members—provided the country has the appropriate institutional setup that will allow it to use the funds efficiently and in a transparent manner.

At the local level, the Fund is acting as a catalyst for building social capital. It finances small-scale community projects to fill gaps in local service delivery and provide communities with ways to take ownership of their own development. RSDF projects fall into one of four categories and target the foremost concerns in rural Romania—Small Rural Infrastructure, Income Generating Activities, Community Based Social Services, and Innovative Projects.

The World Bank funded the RSDF with $30 million in loans over a 3-year period. The Council of Europe Social Development Fund and the British Department for International Development contributed with $10 million and $250,000, respectively. Additional financing came from the Romanian government ($11 million) and the local communities themselves (about $4.3 million).

The Fund shows that building social capacity does not necessarily require huge investments or complicated procedures. RSDF grants do not exceed $75,000, with the majority of projects running well below that threshold. APIS MOLD, for instance, received US$48,600 from the RSDF to purchase housing and machinery.

The Fund also demonstrates that the application and implementation process for small-scale community projects can be simple and effective, without compromising the transparency of the process. The RSDF sends facilitators to the most disadvantaged communities to help them get organized, identify needs and priorities. And dedicated RSDF staff train the project committee on project implementation, financing and procurement, after a project has been selected for financing.

Today, the little honey production facility in Pocreaca symbolizes how far the country has come since the Fund was established. Over the past eleven years, the RSDF has financed community development projects in 950 communities, with the total number of beneficiaries exceeding 400,000. The Fund’s impact, however, extends far beyond the immediate financial support it provides to the communities.

In the case of APIS MOLD, the grant money also led to the creation of extensive networking activities among the association’s members. Beneficiaries had the opportunity to meet each other and share information and know-how. Members attended training in the field and developed new skills to administer and implement their projects—skills that will prove valuable should the association wish to apply for new funds in the future. Project requirements also encourage communities to organize and determine priorities before submitting requests. The Fund creates a sense of self-sufficiency among Romania’s poor who benefit from a transparent project selection process.

The RSDF’s support to APIS MOLD has accomplished solid results. The honey fulfills EU food safety laws, and some has even obtained the much sought-after BIO certification. Confident of the quality of its product, the association has applied for a license to put honey on lunch menus in schools across the country.

APIS MOLD’s nascent success is serving as a model and inspiration for other projects and the association is currently reviewing options to diversify its honey business. Secondary products like pollen, used in cosmetics, or propolis, a natural antibiotic, are in high demand in Europe and represent significant sources of income. Gheorghe Sava, an APIS MOLD member and biology teacher with 30 years’ experience in the honey business, is also working as an independent consultant advising French apiarists on the use of such by-products.

Meanwhile, others in the community are beginning to see opportunities for themselves. Projects that never got off the ground in the past because the concept of an association to pool resources and knowledge was not properly understood finally begin to materialize. A group of sunflower farmers has been meeting with the honey network to hear what community-driven development can achieve and learn from that experience. As a result, the farmers are discussing for the first time a strategy to produce sunflower oil and bio-diesel on a joint basis.