Anwering to yeParking initiative, active players in the mobility and road infrastructure have launched a social media campaign to help promote the message of Motivation Romania Foundation’s “#EnAbleParking?” initiative and have helped spread the message to release parking spaces for people with disabilities to their own audience.
The online campaign has been supported by Free Now, Citylink, Romania Fara Gropi and Sofer Online and has taken place over a 3 weeks’ time frame, starting with March 15th.
Our partners have published messages on their Facebook pages urging people to to release parking spaces for people with disabilities that are abusively occupied, as well as reasons for why those parking spaces need to stay free so they can be used by the people they were created for.
“Through the #EnAbleParking? campaign, we are promoting one of the rights people with disabilities have, namely the one to have an active and independent life. By respecting this right, people without disabilities are encouraging people with disabilities to be valuable members of their community. By release parking spaces, people without disabilities are respecting the law, but also engage in a very normal gesture towards people who need these parking spaces”, declared Monica Tautul, coordinator of the #EnAbleParking? campaign.
Based on statistics offered by the Romanian Auto Registry to Motivation Romania Foundation for the January 2012 – June 2020 time frame, there have been registered over 7800 vehicles adapted for drives and passengers with disabilities on a national level.
Based on the latest studies made by InfoCons, in some of Bucharest’s districts there are over 25000 public parking spaces, but only 715 are marked for use by people with disabilities.
“There have been talks about smart cities, smart counties, smart streets for a few years now. What we haven’t been hearing about are “smart communities”. For a city to be smart, the communities that are part of it need to contribute. And this contribution starts small, with common sense things – like not using a disabled parking spot and not blocking the sidewalk with parked cars. We know that parking options for any driver are becoming limited. This is exactly why, we at yeParking, are constantly looking into new options and methods through which we can help each other. We always need to keep in mind, though, that however limited our options are, disabled people that take part in traffic (either as pedestrians or drivers) have even less options. Smart doesn’t always mean a gadget or an app – smart also means respect and communion in the community”, declared Mihai Lodoaba, co-founder and CEO of yeParking.
As part of the social media campaign, a series of materials encouraging the #EnAbleParking? initiative have been published. The message has reached over 380.000 people and has also been spread through newsletters and partner’s blog posts.
The campaign’s idea took shape as part of the “8 hours overtime for a good cause” organized by the Bucharest Community Foundation, who invited professionals from various areas and NGOs for a meeting.
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About yeParking
yeParking is the only parksharing app in Romania that helps drivers find hundreds of parking spots in various cities around the country: Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest, Iasi, Brasov or Oradea being only a few of them. The app’s goal is to make existing parking spots reach their full value, both for their owners as well as for drivers. It encourages the drivers’ communication and active involvement in solving traffic related problems, based on the premise that change can, and has to, start with the community.
About the Motivation Romania Foundation
Motivation Romania Foundation is a non-profit and non-governmental organization, created in 1995 in order to help disabled children and adults. Their services cover a large range of needs, from evaluations and equipment adapted to various types of motor disabilities, to active recovery and trainings to lead an independent life alongside a wheelchair-using instructor, consulting for making spaces more accessible and adapted sports. To this day, Motivation has given back the freedom of movement and hope for a fulfilling life to more than 25.800 disabled people in Romania. More information can be found at www.motivation.ro.