Funky Citizens

Description

Funky Citizens is a Romanian civil society organization, officially named simply Funky Citizens. It was founded on 22 May 2012 and registered with Romania’s Register of Associations and Foundations. It describes itself as sitting at the intersection of good governance and active citizenship, working as a catalyst for people who want to get involved civically. It offers them tools, information and an optimistic, contagious attitude, with the stated aim of raising the quality of life in Romania.

Its vision is a modern, well-governed Romania with as many engaged citizens as possible. Its strategy is to keep watch on the executive, contribute to institutional reform and make civic education accessible. Its main tools are technology-driven initiatives, data-based advocacy and civic education. Since its founding the organization has built a series of ongoing projects.

Bani Pierduți, launched the same year, was its first tool letting the public track public spending. Factual.ro, launched in 2014 as a fact-checking platform, later became a third-party fact-checker for Facebook and Instagram. It is described as the only Romanian fact-checking platform certified by the International Fact-Checking Network. Buletin de București reports on local government and reached about 4 million readers, and Caravana Civică is a civic education program that has toured cities across Romania.

The organization runs election observation efforts, deploying over 2,300 observers to 3,000 polling stations in one recent year. It monitors disinformation in real time. Earlier projects include De Gardă, weekly episodes about fake news made with support from the Dutch embassy, and Atenție la Naștere, a platform where women can report their experiences in maternity wards.

It also works on public budgets and the rule of law through the Open Budget Partnership and a Rule of Law Report. It defends legislation on access to public information, and organized a petition for justice reform that gathered over 210,000 signatures. Its work has been covered by international outlets including the Guardian, the BBC and Le Monde. It has received recognition including an Open Government Partnership award for promoting open data.