From Romania with love: The man fostering an online community
A cruise ship love affair and strong sense of family led aman from Romania to foster an online community in his adopted city.
Andrei Ogrean, 32, moved to Palmerston North four years ago and soon after set up the Palmy Community Facebook group.
Ogrean worked on cruise ships as an art dealer and fell in love with Rose, a professional dancer from Palmerston North.
The excitement of travelling to different countries and the thrill of cruise ship life began to wear thin when the couple could not spend time together.
‘‘We used to work for different companies, and we weren’t always
Andrei Ogrean
on the same ship. So we decided we’d settle down and start life on land,’’ Ogrean said.
With Rose’s family based in Palmerston North, the couple, who are now married with a toddler, made it their home too.
The lack of knowledge about his new home and missing having community networks led Ogrean to start the Facebook page.
‘‘It was quite difficult for me to find things like where you can find a good plumber, a good builder, what is the best power company to go with? Because I didn’t have the network,’’ he said.
‘‘So I just thought it would be a good idea to create a place where people just ask those questions.’’
Ogrean spends about 20 minutes a day vetting messages that get posted on the site. He wants to contribute to society positively and only posts information useful to the online community. This means posts from large businesses would not make it through, but a student looking for work would.
Creating a sense of community was not all plain sailing, with Ogrean having to make the page private a year ago.
When the page was public, anyone could comment, and he found it was becoming a drawcard for international spammers.
He has also had to block people who have made nasty comments, mostly because of vulgar language, people being too opinionated, or when comments put others down rather than being useful.
He said the site was nicer for it, with the remaining community not spending time responding to horrible comments.
Ogrean was born in Romania and grew up in a small town of 3000 people. He spent his summers with grandparents in an even smaller town of about 800.
He said knowing everyone, greeting everyone, and understanding when to reach out to support others and when to ask for help yourself, became ingrained.
He also came from a big family, which contributed to his strong sense of community.
Despite starting a venture with Rose, as the new owners of The Bed Barn on Tremaine Ave, Ogrean has no plans to stop managing the Facebook page. The business will continue to manufacture beds in PalmerstonNorth.
‘‘It was quite difficult for me to find things like where you can find a good plumber, a good builder, what is the best power company to go with? Because I didn’t have the network.’’