My first contact with David is his incredible setting up of the Speranza event for Mergem’s 10th anniversary: a gigantic exhibition of 200 paintings and works of art sold at auction, with dinner and a Romanian dance performance.
Can you imagine the amount of work to contact and persuade the artists to each offer one or more works? To find a Romanian restaurateur for dinner, to bring in Romanian dancers and singers …
With the benefit of this event, David, with his contacts in the zinc industry and construction, renovated a roof under which 100 people live in the slum of Arieșului. David could not stand idly by in the face of the deplorable conditions in which these people lived. He asked the Roma to participate in part of the work by contributing their labor. Then he planned a huge trench for sanitation work around this large building to reduce the humidity.
Imaginative, he thinks of solar lamps to light up the corridors. Rebuilt, enlarges one or the other housing. Consider offering shoes and jackets to allow children to go to school, because school is the way to build their future.
For Mergem’s 20th birthday, he throws us a famous challenge, a somewhat crazy project: to fill a room of 650 people in order to celebrate this anniversary with the group O’tchalaï and its songs and music from the Balkans and Romania. We got there and it was memorable. David stimulated us with his enthusiasm and his example ….
He didn’t say “I don’t know how to do it”, but well “I don’t know how to do it yet, I will try”. Well done David!
It’s up to us now to continue Mergem’s various projects.
Anne