{"id":12432,"date":"2021-03-01T12:11:49","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T12:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafonline.org\/?post_type=poveste&p=12432"},"modified":"2022-01-31T08:03:28","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T08:03:28","slug":"the-butterfly-effect","status":"publish","type":"poveste","link":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/poveste\/the-butterfly-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"The Butterfly Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Dreams are one thing, accounting is another. The community foundations pair them up two dozen times a year \u2013 sometimes late at night, when all the work for the swimathon, half-marathons, or bikeathons is done; sometimes the day after. That\u2019s the unglamorous, yet all-important \u201cbalance sheet moment\u201d for the community foundations: everything they have worked for \u2013 the dreams, the causes, and the thrills that galvanized the town; the number of participants; the kilometers; the swimming pool lengths and the money raised \u2013 is finally crammed in a tiny chart usually no longer than half a page. The most important figure is, of course, the total at the bottom of the page. But the final amounts raised for the causes are always larger; the Romanian-American Foundation matches part of the individual donations as a way to foster community involvement.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n

by\u00a0Mona D\u00eer\u021bu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Text published in RAF\u2019s 2017 Annual Report<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also about the decimals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re the nerdy type, you may wonder \u2013 once you\u2019ve done the math \u2013 how was it that so many of the final amounts raised for the various causes include decimals. At the 2017 Bucharest Swimathon, for example, over one third of the 23 causes listed are not only about dollars, but also about cents. Who, you might ask \u2013 and why \u2013 would believe a few coins might make a difference?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Many of the decimals come from exchange rates, of course \u2013 they pop up whenever someone donates from a foreign currency account, explains Alina Kasprovschi, who runs the Bucharest Community Foundation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n

But there are, nevertheless, people who\u00a0decide<\/em>\u00a0to donate a handful of coins. One of them, for example, pledged at last year\u2019s Bucharest Swimathon 23.70 lei (6.28 USD). That means a contribution of 0,005861% of the total 104,011 USD raised during the day; in case your spreadsheet rounds up the numbers to the first two decimals, you\u2019ll miss this contribution entirely.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do decimals matter? They do, scientists argue. In fact, the whole story of the \u201cbutterfly effect\u201d, as it is popularly known, started with a meteorologist who decided to recompute a weather prediction and introduced, instead of the six decimals he had for a variable, only the first three. What he got, in the end, was a completely different weather scenario. What we\u2019ve gotten from his mistake is a whole new mathematical field about how small changes in the initial conditions can lead to entirely different outcomes. And, of course, we also have the romantic metaphor saying that a butterfly\u2019s flap of a wing in Brazil may cause, weeks later and thousands of miles away, in Texas, nothing less than a tornado (it\u2019s a little more complicated than this, of course).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n

Those 23.70 lei \u2013 the equivalent of a medium priced pizza in Romania\u2019s capital city \u2013 may also lead to different outcomes, in ways we will probably never know. What we do know, though, is that the money was pledged by a 5-years old boy, \u0218tefan, who \u201cdonated all his piggy bank\u201d, says Maria Orzu, his mother, to help cover the kindergarten expenses for 15 kids from disadvantaged families. \u0218tefan is still in preschool, so he doesn\u2019t understand precisely what his 23.70 lei can buy; and it\u2019s irrelevant, anyway. What matters is that he donated\u00a0all his savings<\/em>\u00a0for kids who are not as fortunate as he \u2013 and that he understood\u00a0the mechanism<\/em>: some of us need a little help, some of us swim to raise awareness and money for a cause, and some of us donate all our piggy bank savings. It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

The mechanism<\/em>\u00a0that set in motion a whole new movement in Romania started to roll in the summer 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, in Cluj Napoca. Nobody knew back then what a Swimathon was \u2013 and nobody bothered to search for the\u00a0correct pronunciation<\/a>, so we all settled for the Romanian version of [sw\u026am-a-ton]. The accounting job of this first Romanian Swimathon delivered a chart showing three financed projects \u2013 all for kids with visual, hearing and other disabilities \u2013 and a total of 28,200 lei raised (9,248.02 USD). One third of the money was raised by a single person, Alina Porumb \u2013 the soul of the community experiment \u2013 who swam, that July, 55 swimming pool lengths in only 90 minutes. \u201cEven during a financial crisis\u201d, said Alina Porumb after the event, \u201cthe people of Cluj are willing to support community projects\u201d. The donors were mainly companies back then, but she believed there was a huge untapped potential for individual donors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

She was right: the experiment in Cluj in 2009 was replicated, molded to local contexts and creatively developed by a dozen community foundations around the country. What started nine years ago as a small event in a Transylvanian city has grown into something of a tradition, with cohorts of amateur swimmers, runners and bikers enrolling each year to raise money for hundreds of local causes. They all tell the story of a Romania you rarely see on the evening news \u2013 a country where the very idea of community was broken down decades ago by an ideology named, ironically,\u00a0communism<\/em>; and a place where the expression \u201cvoluntary work\u201d \u2013 or \u201cpatriotic work\u201d \u2013 meant for decades, incredibly, the exact opposite: \u201cmandatory work\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Correcting the distortions takes years, even decades, and we\u2019re not even near our ever changing finishing line. Yet every swimmer, runner or biker who has ever crossed an actual finish line is a wing that one day flapped for a community who learns how to heal itself (balance sheets are great, but they can\u2019t convey all the outputs of this new kind of community building).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

First of all, sport events are like fluids<\/strong>. They take the shape, the size and the mood of their host communities \u2013 and they tend to become\u00a0the events<\/em>, especially in smaller cities. In the port town of Gala\u021bi, for example, most of the half-marathon\u2019s track sticks to the banks of the Danube \u2013 and for the 2018 edition the people here have a whole list of options: a half-marathon, a popular race (up to 3 kilometers), three runs for children and a relay race; in the previous years, they even had a pet run. \u201cWe\u2019ve learned that we can change something\u201d, says the executive director of the local community foundation, Cristi Ochiu. \u201cAnd that we\u2019re not alone: there are tens, hundreds like us\u201d (over 1,600 runners, to be precise, since 2014). Hundreds of miles away, in \u021aara F\u0103g\u0103ra\u0219ului, there\u2019s no running, no half-marathon and no marathon: the people of F\u0103g\u0103ra\u0219 \u2013 a string of small mountain communities stretching between two large cities, Bra\u0219ov and Sibiu \u2013 have, instead, an impressive bikeathon. In 2017, over 700 bikers \u2013 almost half of them kids \u2013 enrolled to raise money for 12 local projects. \u201cHow much power can a dust particle have?\u201d, they ask. \u201cFirst, one dust particle absorbs a water particle. Then, another dust particle absorbs another water particle \u2013 and so on. That\u2019s how a healthy cloud is formed. And then other clouds gather. And then it rains. And then the grass starts to grow\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Second, sports events are a glue for the community.<\/strong>\u00a0They attract local money for local causes from local donors. There are virtually no national causes among those listed in the final tables \u2013 and if they sometimes are listed, they\u2019re never the focus. Various vocal NGOs gravitate around these sports events, relationships are built with local authorities, businesses and the media step in, local energies are awakened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Third, they build constituency for the community foundations<\/strong>. The number of those involved \u2013 staff, volunteers, competitors, supporters \u2013 steadily increases year by year; it\u2019s a trend, if you look at the graphs. In Sibiu, for example, they have a marathon that grew from a few hundred runners in 2012 to over 3,300 in 2017. The local authorities co-financed the event, and last year\u2019s financial result was impressive indeed: over 117,000 USD raised in a city with 170,000 inhabitants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Fourth, sporting events have become the foundations\u2019 signature.\u00a0<\/strong>They\u2019re a great chance for them to spread the word about their mission \u2013 and, sometimes, an effective tool to support other projects. Take the D\u00e2mbovi\u021ba community foundation for example \u2013 one of the newest, officially established in 2015. \u201cOnly from the field one can influence the result of the game\u201d, the initiators believe, so last year they organized in the town of T\u00e2rgovi\u0219te, the old capital of Walachia, their first swimathon for six local causes \u2013 with the generous support of the local authorities. In Ia\u0219i, the largest city in north-eastern Romania, the community foundation organizes both the traditional swimathon and a so-called \u201crace for schools\u201d that helped raise money for another program, the \u0218tiin\u021bescu Fund; they have already held three editions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Fifth, sports events unleash local creativity<\/strong>. In Timi\u0219oara, the community foundation combined various competitions under the brand name Timotion, including one for roller skates and scooters \u2013 and they have a whole list of ambassadors, including the Himalayan climber Horia Colib\u0103\u0219anu and the seven-time Olympic medalist Simona Am\u00e2nar. Bra\u0219ov has an obstacle race and a good hashtag, #eroudebrasov (#brasovhero). Oradea introduced at the Swimathon a relay competition, Bac\u0103u has a special award for the team with \u201cthe strongest visual identity\u201d, and in Mure\u0219 everybody \u201cbikes for a good cause\u201d \u2013 namely for projects promoting \u201curban cycling\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

In 2019, it will have been ten years from the first swimathon in Romania \u2013 the flap of the wing that started this whole new movement. Tens of thousands of flaps followed. But the truth is there\u2019s no way a butterfly in Brazil can set off a cascade of atmospheric events that spurs the formation of a tornado in Texas, scientists say. The metaphor is used, though, to explain why chaotic systems like the weather can\u2019t be predicted more than few days in advance. Nobody knows every little factor affecting the atmosphere, so nobody can foresee exactly when, where and how a storm will form.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Likewise, nobody knows how the access to kindergarten will influence the lives of the 15 kids helped by a boy who made, when he was 5-years old, his first donation for a cause. There\u2019s no one to quantify, over the years, the impact of the tens of thousands of contributions to local causes \u2013 or how many lives they will have changed. We all have to settle for the tiny charts counting the volunteers, the amateur athletes, the causes, the donors and the money they raised. The rest is unpredictable, and maybe that\u2019s the whole beauty of the butterfly effect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12367,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tax_categories":[90],"class_list":["post-12432","poveste","type-poveste","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tax_categories-philanthropy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poveste\/12432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poveste"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/poveste"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"tax_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax_categories?post=12432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}