8th June 2015
Romanian stories in Britain (I) Adrian Pascu Tulbure: ‘Volunteering – bringing benefits to both sides’
Adrian Pascu-Tulbure was born in Piatra Neamţ, moved to the UK in 1991, and joined the UK Civil Service directly after leaving Cambridge University, where he read English Literature. After stints in a Ministerial Private Office and working on UK-EU relations in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, he joined HM Treasury as their Ministerial Speechwriter. He writes the speeches for five Ministers – making sure that whether it’s in a lecture theatre, on the Government front bench or after an official dinner, Treasury Ministers are never less than lively, powerful and persuasive!
Here is his story, the first chapter in our ‘Romanian stories in Britain’ series.
‘When I was growing 
up, most people used the summer as a time to relax and charge the batteries. But for us, it was the busiest time of the year.
After the Revolution my parents founded and ran a charity called British-Romanian Connections. Every year from 1991, they would bring British students over to Romania to teach English in summer camps. Thousands came. We spent those early years on the road – opening a camp in Timisoara one day, attending a talent show in Craiova the next, then maybe a fundraising lunch at Buftea before back to base in Piatra Neamt.
Fast forward a few years and I was involved too – training up our Romanian translators, getting the Brits out of the inevitable nocturnal scrapes (here I should probably express belated thanks to the consular team in Bucharest!), taking them to Sinaia or to Costinesti or to various restaurants around Lipscani, which was then just about beginning to wake up to its touristic potential… It was at turns hilarious, exhilarating, maddening – and absolutely worth it.
Fast forward some more years. British-Romanian Connections is quietly wound down – progress, the Internet, rising wealth means that there’s much less of a market in Romania for English summer schools. I am in London, respectably employed in the Civil Service.
I’m at a dinner and the talk turns to a charity – a once-illustrious name, with a history spanning some hundred years, but in need of some new faces round the table and some fresh ideas to make it relevant for the 21st century. Am I in? You bet.
The next few month were a flurry of activity. The fundamentals were made clear to us. Alexandra Rose Charities had been founded in 1912 by Queen Alexandra, widow to Edward VII. Every 26 June, on the streets of London tens of thousands of volunteers would sell artificial roses, with the money going to Queen Alexandra’s chosen charities. Alexandra Rose Day concluded with an enormous society ball, one of the prime events of the London Season. By 1920, £775,000 had been raised – a huge amount of money at the time. Over 100 years the charity had evolved towards a grant-giving organisation, which funded charities too small to do their own fundraising. But in the age of JustGiving, crowdfunding and online campaigns, that approach was obsolete. Why give to Alexandra Rose Charities when you could give directly to your chosen cause?
So a small group of us hammered out a new vision. We each brought to the table our own experiences – whether in finance, in PR, in advertising, in strategy. And, hearts slightly in our mouths, we prepared to present that vision to the Board of Trustees.
Fast forward to today. The project has taken off. Even the BBC is talking about us! Our new scheme is tackling food poverty, and food education, in some of the most deprived boroughs of London. Our Rose Vouchers are allowing pregnant women and low-income families free fruit and vegetables, fresh from the market stall. Our volunteers are showing recipients how to prepare and experiment with these sometimes unfamiliar foods. People’s lives are being turned round.
And those of us who proposed and presented the project are now Trustees ourselves – helping oversee the long-term future of the charity, setting the strategy and managing the funds. There’s less partying involved than when I was in Romania, but it’s exhilarating in a different kind of way.
Conclusions? A few. First, the skills you learn in any kind of job are enormously transferrable. Second, the volunteers making a difference are ordinary people. You don’t need special skills, just a bit of enthusiasm, a small amount of spare time, and the desire to give things a go. And third, that the feeling you get when you know you’re helping change people’s lives is extraordinarily rewarding.
I can’t recommend it enough.’
By Adrian Pascu Tulbure
Speechwriter with HM Treasury