Sa mai ne amintim de creerea fundatiei Soros – 6 noiembrie 2016
Dinica Roman shared Mirel Curea's post.
You have to see her. She's the most creative person I've ever seen, a
little bit neurotic....
ou have to see her. She's the most creative person I've ever seen, a
little bit neurotic."
When he returned to New York, Soros called Sandra Pralong.
"What do you think of my foundation?"
"What foundation?" she answered perplexedly. She had no idea
what he was talking about. "It's not functioning yet."
"Do you want to go to Romania and x it?"
Soros seemed to be offering her a job, and Sandra Pralong grew
excited. Finally, he asked her formally to become the foundation's rst
executive director, and she agreed. In April 1990, Soros met again with
Teodoresco, and together they agreed that he would become the foun-
dation's rst president.
Now that the top two jobs had been staffed, the foundation could
get under way.
��
The foundation began functioning in June 1990. It was called the Foun-
dation for an Open Society. Sandra Pralong arrived in Romania in Sep-
tember to take up her new duties.
For Alin Teodoresco, getting on with Soros was not simple, for
Soros displayed little patience. He wanted to get the money spent
and move on to other countries, other projects. Teodoresco was used
to dialogue. "When I rst met him, he was like a boss," Teodoresco
recalled. He used the word "boss" pejoratively, to signify someone
who expected his employees to function without too much instruction
and without the chance to ask the boss questions.
As time wore on, though, Teodoresco became totally awestruck by
the investor. He developed a theory about George Soros: that he was
on a higher moral plane than most other people. He thought the secret
to understanding Soros was to think of him as competing with himself,
A Cheap Price for Freedom132
not against others, a concept that Teodoresco had drawn from the phi-
losopher Immanuel Kant.
It was not easy creating the foundation from scratch. Just adver-
tising for foundation staff in the newspaper was precedent setting. So
was advertising the rst scholarships. Despite its break with commu-
nism, Romania remained secretive, suspicious. When the rst group
of 60 Soros scholars arrived at the Bucharest train station on January
3, 1991, headed for the University of Edinburgh, one was crying. She
confessed that when she had seen the newspaper advertisement she
had thought it was a trick. The only Romanians who had gone abroad
until then had been in high places, and she was decidedly not. That
was why she was crying.
Even the foundation staff found it hard to function in the "open"
atmosphere at the foundation. Anca Haracim, a tall, attractive
30year-old, began working at the foundation as program coordinator
in October 1990, but in 1993 she succeeded Sandra Pralong as exec-
utive director. Her budget that year was a hefty $6 million.
Haracim had grown up believing that every activity required a cen-
tralized body to make decisions. Working at the foundation shattered
that mind-set. Her constant smile masked the fear she felt at rst. But
by 1994 she was able to say, "I'm completely infused with the founda-
tion ideology. I can even apply what I've learned to my private life. I
take charge more. Now I'm at the next stage. I have to delegate. That's
more dif cult than taking charge."
��
Soros could not live down his Hungarian past, not at least in Romania.
With a population of 23.1 million, Romania had in its midst 2.4 million
Hungarians. For a Hungarian-born billionaire to arrive in Romania,
preaching capitalism, economic reform, and an open society seemed,
to some Romanians, simply a disguised way to turn Romania's Hun-
garian population against the government.
Attacks on Soros began soon after the foundation was launched.
Soros was accused in some newspapers of trying to "sell" Transylva-
nia, where 1.8 million Hungarians lived, to Hungary. The foundation
sought to be fair, not to discriminate in favor of Hungarian residents
of Romania-or against them. It was not easy. In the city of Cluge, Hun-
A Cheap Price for Freedom133
garian residents had applied in large numbers, and the foundation
had no choice but to award them what seemed like a disproportionate
number of grants.
Soros ignored the attacks. In the absence of any guidelines from
Soros, foundation of cials fought back by being as open as possible
with the public. Before the attacks, the foundation had never pub-
lished the names of scholarship winners. Once the attacks began, it
did. "This was a way to show others that we were not just selling Tran-
sylvania to the Hungarians, but also doing good things," said Anca
Haracim.
Even the name the foundation had taken for itself-the Foundation
for an Open Society-created the suspicion that the staff had some-
thing to hide. After all, the foundation did not carry Soros's name.
So Pralong asked Teodoresco to rename it the Soros Foundation for
an Open Society. Hopefully, Soros's name on the marquee would con-
vince people that
Bani, intotdeauna este vorba despre bani! Vanzarile, fie ca este vorba despre vandutul de sosete, sau despre vandutul unei tari, se fac doar pe bani. Ia urma banilior, si vei intelege negresit cine ce a vandut, cine ce a cumparat!
Rețeaua Soros. George Soros este un om de afaceri american care a investit enorm într-o rețea de ONG-uri. Fundaţia Soros în România. ...
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