About Asociația “Niemals Allein”

In the winter of 2016, a retired schoolteacher in the Cornești neighbourhood of Sighișoara was found in her apartment three days after a fall. She had been living alone for eleven years. Several neighbours who helped that week kept meeting afterwards — first in a kitchen, then in a borrowed parish room — asking a simple question: how many others are there?

The answer, gathered door by door over the following months, was uncomfortable. In 2017 those twelve volunteers formalised their work and registered Asociația “Niemals Allein” with National Registration Number 969/A/2017, under Government Ordinance no. 26/2000 on associations and foundations.

The German name was deliberate. Sighișoara — Schäßburg to the Transylvanian Saxons who built its citadel — has been a multilingual town for more than 800 years. “Niemals Allein” is a promise made in the language of neighbours who left, kept for the neighbours who stayed.

We began with fourteen elderly beneficiaries and one van borrowed on Saturdays. Today we run four permanent programmes, coordinate 148 trained volunteers, and work in partnership with the Sighișoara City Hall social assistance department, the Mureș County General Directorate for Social Assistance and Child Protection, local parishes of three confessions, and the town's schools.

We have never had a paid fundraiser. We have never run a campaign we could not account for. And we have never closed a case simply because a project's funding period ended.

Niemals Allein is governed under Government Ordinance no. 26/2000 regarding associations and foundations, as subsequently amended, and by its own constitutive act and statute filed with the Registry of Associations and Foundations of the Sighișoara Court.

The General Assembly of members is the supreme decision-making body and meets at least once per year in ordinary session. It approves the activity report, the income and expenditure budget, the annual financial statements, and any amendment to the statute.

The Board of Directors (Consiliul Director) manages the association between assemblies. Board members serve four-year mandates and are unpaid. A Censor (cenzor) independent of the board verifies the financial management annually, as required by law.

Conflicts of interest are declared in writing and recorded in the board minutes. No board member, and no person related to a board member, may be a supplier of paid goods or services to the association.