This is about contact with our fellow-citizens :)

Imagine our countries were alone on different islands of the same ocean but the only connection between them was our YTNF boat.

The question is how to most effective create the opportunity to express themselves…This is how the idea of SOS Bottle appeared!

Being alone on an island they follow the traditional procedure of sending SOS messages in a bottle, making therefore a call for rescue and help from distress…

There are lots of us out here who struggle with our issues that are willing to listen, talk and offer encouragement and support to those who feel alone, people from our societies.

This is why, on 11th of August, during Vadul lui Woodstock Festival, AVI-MD volunteers prepared several bottles for SOS messages and gave the chance to Moldovan citizens to express their opinions, concerns, dislikes and problems about our society and country.

People who shared their opinions where surprisingly serious about it. Here are some of the most precious ideas we’ve discovered there:

• unhealthy lifestyle
• unprotected environment
• misery and indifference
• unemployment
• analphabetism
• poverty, migration of citizens abroad
• high prices, small salaries
• abandoned children by parents who go to work abroad
• communism
• corruption and bureaucracy 
• transnistrian issue
• absence of common visions and consensus that would reunite people 
• limited access to impartial information
• infringement of human rights
• lake of support of civil initiative by the local authorities
• deficient promotion of democratic, european, modern values
• discrimination
• renewal of political class is needed
• lake of culture, respect between people
• AIDS
• the right to a healthy lifestyle of non-smokers should be respected everywhere in public places
• intolerance towards people with mental and/or physical disabilities
• boring daily routine
• social gap between different layers of society
• people smile less and less
• slow development of the society
• donors hardly give grants to newly created NGOs for their projects
• peace and changes in our society start with myself and my family!
• we must be more preoccupied about our moral status. Let’s do voluntary service, this is going to re-educate us!

…This was our first attempt to make our society’s voice heard. With a bigger collimation of forces, power of will and attributes we could develop this activity in all the countries that are part of YTNF, as a larger campaign, that would loom affinities and distinctions of national backgrounds.

YTNF is an international multilateral project. Therefore expectations both at international and local level need to be met. As it is a project made by people for people, people must be heard.

We believe that thoughts and feelings of our fellow-citizens, even if we never met them other than here, in cyber-space, are going to help us adapt our future activities to the necessities and to the reality of the society we live in.

In the same spirit of representation this article has begun, messages we received could be pieces of a big puzzle that would afterwards reveal a Treasure map!