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Here at GoalEurope magazine, we aim to show the Eastern European outsourcing industry from different angles, beyond what is commonly published in international media.

The outsourcing industry is all about people who not only write code, answer phone calls or enter data, but who also create new ideas at project meetings, share a joke in the company’s kitchen, struggle to get home in rush hour traffic, worry about their children’s education and help their friends apply for new job openings. In other words, the outsourcing industry is one huge living organism and our objective is to go beyond numbers about skills, availability and cost savings and allow the Western business community to see the region in another dimension.

Today the story is about Arobs, a Romanian company from Cluj-Napoca, who challenged its employees with a Play-Dough competition to raise funds for Alia, a 3 year old girl from the same town who has cancer.

Camelia Cristureanu, an Arobs project manager who was involved in the fund-raising campaign, told us that her colleague brought the story about Alia’s predicament to the attention of the company. “At Arobs we have strong family values and family members and children are invited to take part in company festivities, be it Christmas or Easter. So even though we are a rather large company, we know each other on a more personal level. It’s no wonder that hearing a such a story about Alia reached our hearts quickly and spurred us into action”, she said.

To help raise funds for Alia’s treatment in France, the company distributed Play-Dough to all of its employees to create figures to be sold at an auction. What resulted was a assortment of creations, ranging from fruits to animals and cartoon characters. The most coveted figurine was a meticulously built ship which fetched the highest bid of 100 Euros. In total, Arobs’ 200 employees managed to collect 2700 Euros for Alia’s treatment which was put on a dedicated account on June 17, 2011. The company matched every donation received with its own contribution.

Cristureanu says that Alia is feeling better. “She is at home right now but has to get back to Paris in October to continue her treatment. She is a fighter, as her parents tell us on her website and we all hope for the best”.

To read more about Alia or help her parents raise money, please visit their website HelpAlia. A Google payment mechanism is built-in to make donations as simple as possible.

We at GoalEurope will be glad to hear other stories from the outsourcing community about acts of kindness and activities beyond developing software and data processing. Send us your stories.

P.S. For all of you cynics out there thinking that charity is being used to generate PR, think again. What makes you feel better: help a sick child regain its health or finance the publishers of Black Book of Outsourcing so that you can appear at the top of their ranking?