30 Days Smoke Free Challenge

A 2-in-1 campaign: 30 days to give up smoking, at the same time raising funds for charity.

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 23.08.2015, 14:00

Galantom.ro — a fund-raising platform we already mentioned in one of our shows last year — starts off on the right foot this year with a two-in-one campaign: 30 days in which you should give up smoking, at the same time offering support and raising funds for charity.

Galantom was born out of the initiative of young people with a passion for social programmes and IT, who chose to get involved and develop non-profit programmes with a positive impact on Romanian society. In the following minutes, Andrei Chirtoc, cofounder of the Galantom platform is telling us more about this project.

Andrei Chirtoc: “We want to make a point there is more to life than cigarettes. People who don’t smoke are in better physical shape and in better spirit too. Our idea, which we are trying to implement together with the counselling centre for giving up smoking with the Marius Nasta institute, is to launch a challenge for smokers. Of course everybody knows the reasons why one should give up this bad habit, but we’d like to offer them an extra reason, namely participation in a charitable act. We have devoted a site to this campaign, which is called galantom.rosmokefreechallenge. If you visit the site first you have to choose one of the causes you want to support, then you make your own fund-raising page and for 30 days you’ve got to try to donate the money you’d otherwise spend on cigarettes. You support the cause, but you’ll also benefit support and that’s motivating, because you can invite all your friends and relatives to make donations and support you. After 30 days without a smoke, there are five times more chances for a person to give up smoking altogether. If you want to break this bad habit it’s OK, because there are lots of benefits and if you don’t, it’s also a good thing because you have proven yourself, proved that you can give up any time and besides, you have supported charity, with positive effects on the community.”

The most frequent diseases smoking is causing in Romania are heart-related, such as heart attacks and strokes, which do not necessarily kill but can cripple one. Experts believe that giving up smoking only after a year can cut the risks of such illnesses to half.

Even if hardened smokers already know what smoking is doing to them and the risks posed by such a habit, Galantom.ro is offering them an extra reason to renounce smoking — joining charity with visible benefits for community life. We’ve asked Andrei Chirtoc if this commitment in front of the others works as a better motivation.

Andrei Chirtoc: “Of course it offers a better motivation. And I’ve seen that in people who are involved in various fund-raising campaigns and run the first marathon of their lives; they are very motivated because the others support them and that doesn’t let them give up. We hope that the same principle will hold true for 30 Day Smoke Free Challenge. Somehow, we also count on the promises we made to our friends or relatives because ultimately, the conflict with smoking occurs between relatives, whether they are your brother, sister, mother, father or lover, who keep pestering you to give up smoking because it does you no good. The promises made and the public campaign are likely to make the person joining the campaign give up smoking”.

The fund-raising webpage is customized, allowing users to make a photo album, choose a motivation and directing them to an online donations site for the cause they support. The participant in the campaign donates the money he or she would have spent on cigarettes on his or her page or at the end of 30 days. The respective person also promotes his cause online and offline and encourages the people in his or her social circle to also make donations supporting his or her charitable cause and effort. We asked Andrei Chirtoc whether there were many people daring to join the marathon of giving up smoking.

Andrei Chirtoc: “We launched the campaign last week and we have four applicants whom we keep in touch with and who will hopefully turn their intentions into deed. We think that this new and creative campaign or idea might get people’s attention and make them rise up to the challenge”.

One can safely make donations online, on the fund-raising page of Galantom.ro. Since August 2013, Galantom.ro has succeeded in bringing together over 50 organizations, 738 volunteer fund raisers and over 5,000 donors who have raised more than 760,000 lei for projects with an impact on the community, in the field of healthcare, education, the environment, community development, social inclusion and sports.