Luciana Grosu, GPJ Romania
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA – Andreea Maria Szabo, who is in her 20s, says she found her husband on Romania’s first dating website for people with disabilities.
Before the website, she says dating was difficult because she has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a group of progressive nerve disorders. She tried general online dating sites, but she says that the men she met were eventually deterred when they learned of her disease, which causes loss in muscle strength and touch sensation in the feet and legs and sometimes in the hands.
“Even those people who seemed to accept me at first gradually withdrew,” she says. “It was really tough telling people about my disability.”
She says her luck changed with the creation of DizabilLove.ro, the first Romanian dating website for disabled people.
Her husband, Daniel Szabo, 25, is not disabled. A Romanian Internet technology specialist, he is an adminstrator and moderator for DizabilLove.ro.
“I have learned about the volunteering opportunity with DizabilLove.ro while searching for a paid IT job,” he says. “I liked the idea of being able to contribute and offer hope to disabled people, so I signed up.”
His volunteering paid off when he received a message from his future wife five months after joining the site.
“She found me,” he says, smiling.
Szabo says she found his profile on the site.
“I was browsing the website, and his photo caught my eye,” she says. “I found him really good-looking, and one could tell from his smile he is a good man. So I said to myself: ‘Why not? Let’s give it a try.’
The relationship developed rapidly with long online chats.
“Only a few days after we first met online, I decided to visit her where she lived,” Szabo says. “That is [a] 340-kilometer distance from my home!”
He says he never left his wife’s city after meeting her in person.
“I eventually moved officially, took a job in her city, and we got married,” he says.
The couple then moved to Spain, where they currently reside. But Szabo is still involved with the website. He hopes to see it keep growing to connect people across Romania as it connected him and his wife.
“Being part of DizabilLove.ro gave me the feeling I can be a better person than I knew I could be,” he says. “I believe DizabilLove.ro is one the best things I’ve been part of.”
The creator of the country’s first dating website for disabled people says she wants the site to connect isolated Romanians. Physical and social barriers make it difficult for people with disabilities to date and make friends in traditional ways. Although few users have met in person, most have reported forming emotional bonds, with some even reporting falling in love with other users and dating offline. Still, critics say that disabled people have more basic needs to meet than socialization and that any socialization should occur outside disabled groups. Site users and volunteers respond that everyone needs socialization and can join the site, providing a more accepting way for disabled people to meet fellow Romanians with and without disabilities.
There are 700,000 disabled people in Romania, making up about 3 percent of the total population, according to the National Authority for Disabled Persons in Romania.
DizabilLove.ro recently celebrated its 1,300th registered user, says site creator Ela Iliesi. About 95 percent of users have physical disabilities, but the network is open to everyone.
Iliesi was only 21 when she created DizabilLove.ro. Smiling as she recalls the process, she says she was studying at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies at the time.
“The website’s idea was born in the autumn of 2008,” she says. “I can tell you I was so passionate about it that I lost my sleep. I was feeling anxious to create the site, to see whether it will works, whether people will really use it.”
Iliesi doesn’t have a disability.
“My aunt and uncle both had health problems, yet they found each other and lived a happy and fulfilled life together,” she says. “They taught me how important it is to look inside a person.”
She says she was also inspired by a message that a Romanian TV presenter posted on his blog several years ago from an HIV-positive girl who wrote to him that she felt so alone and rejected that she planned to stop taking her medication in order to kill herself.
“What really shocked me at that point was the great number of people who responded to that girl, encouraged her and told her they have similar problems,” Iliesi says.
She had an epiphany that a social network could bring these isolated people together.
She says creating DizabilLove.ro wasn’t easy because she had no previous experience building a website.
“Several companies said they could help me build the website, but they were asking for hundreds of euros, and that was far out my reach,” she says.
Instead, she decided to study informatics further in order to build the dating website herself.
“It was really scary the amount of things I was supposed to learn in order to give life to my idea!” she says. “I felt really discouraged at that point.”
But then a colleague put her in touch with a firm that offered her the domain name and to build the site for her for 2,000 lei ($620) – “a reasonable price,” she says.
“They liked my idea and made me a convenient offer,” says Iliesi, who paid for everything out of pocket.
With no previous model in Romania to follow, Iliesi studied disabled dating initiatives from abroad.
“I used to come earlier at school every day in order to use the faculty’s high-speed Internet connection,” she says.
She discovered that many Romanians had profiles on these websites from abroad because of the void in their own country. She created, translated and adapted the content and communicated her vision to the firm.
“This was really complex,” she says. “I had to think very carefully every detail in terms of design, links and content.”
She launched the website in 2009 and posted an advertisement for volunteers like Szabo.
“I was surprised by the huge response,” she says proudly. “Eighty people applied for this unpaid position.”
She recruited about 10 volunteers who specialize in various fields such as IT, web design, advertising and public relations. Like Szabo, they work remotely.
“The best thing about DizabilLove.ro is that [it’s] truly a national team, as we have volunteers from all major cities of Romania,” Iliesi says.
Florian Mihai Radu, 30, art director and volunteer designer for DizabilLove.ro, says the site’s growth surprised the whole team.
“Soon after launching the website, I had to redesign some webpages because we had almost reached the platform’s limits,” Radu says.
Iliesi says that one of these users was an especially joyful addition for her.
“A couple of months ago, I had the joy of discovering the very girl that inspired me to create the website is now a member of DizabilLove.ro,” she says. “She is OK, and she’s looking for friends.”
Iliesi, who currently works as a search engine optimization expert, says she plans to continue to develop her online project.
“Our community grew a lot, to the point we almost reached the technical limits of the online platform,” she says. “That’s why we plan a major update of the website during the next months.”
Updates will include new features to stimulate more interaction among users, such as the ability to chat and post photo albums, like on Facebook.
Iliesi, who still funds the site herself, is optimistic about its chances to become self-sustainable as it continues to grow.
“At the moment, the project costs around 700 lei [$215] a year,” she says.
She recently introduced advertising on the site, but she says she has never applied for funding from other organizations.
“Funding applications are time-consuming, and one doesn’t get too much out of it anyway,” she says. “I think that if you really want to do something, then you can do it without being formally registered as an NGO.”
Radu says the site proves that this new model can succeed.
“DizabilLove.ro benefited from limited, personal funding and – look – after three years, is still up and running,” he says. “This proves the failure of the NGOs system in Romania. They spend huge amounts of funding with doubtful results.”
Iliesi is now looking for sponsors in order to organize a series of face-to-face meetings for the site’s users in Bucharest, Romania’s capital.
Expanding the community has always been a priority of Iliesi, who says she posed a challenging question to her nondisabled blogger friends after launching the site: “Would you date a disabled person?”
“I personally treasure life stories about couples where one partner is able to overcome the physical defect of the other because of the strong emotional bond,” she says.
Ioana Popa, 24, a DizabilLove.ro moderator from Sibiu, a city in central Romania, says it’s a worthwhile question.
“Finding love is difficult for all of us,” she says. “For disabled persons, it is even more complicated.”
Popa has a cousin whose hand was amputated.
“My cousin is constantly afraid of being rejected for not being ‘whole,’” she says. “It’s hard for him to open up to someone.”
Bogdan Brumari, 24, DizabilLove.ro’s software specialist from Iasi, a city in northwestern Romania, says that close friends with disabilities report similar frustrations.
“If they are not lucky enough to live in a big city, it’s very difficult for them to find persons with similar problems,” Brumari says. “Starting a relationship with a nondisabled person is even less likely to happen for them.”
Radu, who was born with a deformed left hand, agrees.
“There are very few open-minded, educated people who would not care about the partner’s physical disability,” he says. “The vast majority will always ask themselves, ‘Do I want my friends and family to see me going out with that handicapped?’”
Radu says these attitudes limit dating opportunities for disabled people.
“Have you ever seen a young person in a wheelchair enjoying herself in a disco or club in Romania?” he asks rhetorically.
Ana Maria Cretu, 23, vice president of IHTIS Association, a nongovernmental organization that serves disabled youth, says there are many barriers.
“First of all, there is the concrete barrier of the lack of physical access to most places,” says Cretu, who has a walking disability. “Then, society’s rejection. Also, disabled people’[s] lack of self-trust.”
Her sister and fellow association member, Raluca Cretu, 28, who is also disabled, says she uses DizabilLove.ro frequently because it makes it easier and safer for disabled people to connect to the world.
“In front of the computer, a disabled person is less afraid of being rejected, so she can express herself more freely,” she says.
Szabo reflects on his experience meeting his wife online.
“Two persons who communicate online can be more sincere and opened than in real-life situations because they have the advantage of anonymity,” he says.
For this reason, Catalin Moisei, 22, an IT consultant who works on the DizabilLove.ro team from Bucharest, says most users are still hesitant to meet fellow users in person.
A survey carried out by DizabilLove.ro’s team in 2010 showed modest, yet consistent progress. Sixty percent of respondents reported that they had formed an emotional bond since joining the community. Most people said they had met new friends, though most users hadn’t met yet offline.
“I noticed many people who do have a profile on DizabilLove.ro still complain about loneliness,” says Mihaela Mihaescu, 44, president and founder of IHTIS Association.
Raluca Cretu, who has had two relationships that began online, says that eventual in-person interaction is key.
“Ideally, online socialization should go beyond the virtual world,” she says. “Disabled people are human beings and have real feelings. They need love in the real life.”
Several survey respondents did report that they had fallen in love thanks to the site and had begun relationships in person.
But some critics remain skeptical of the website’s worth, such as representatives of the Association of Somatically Disabled People From Romania, a nongovernmental organization that assists disabled and chronically ill Romanians, though they admit never having used the site.
“Disabled people have more serious problems, such as unemployment,” says Ruxandra Miuti, the association’s communication specialist. “Socialization is not their first worry.”
Miuti also says that few disabled people have Internet access because of material constraints. Maria Cozea, the association’s executive director, says disabled people can focus only on their immediate, basic needs because most live in extreme poverty.
“A socialization website – what for?” she asks, puzzled.
She says the association’s beneficiaries are usually in need of bread.
“They are certainly not interested in the Internet,” she says.
But Mihaescu disagrees about disabled people’s use of the Internet, noting that 80 percent of her organization’s advocacy efforts are online.
“We achieved quite a lot through the Internet, so I think pshysically disabled young people should really make the most of their chance if they have access to the virtual world,” she says.
Iliesi agrees.
“The Internet helps us connect and unite to achieve common causes,” she says. “I think new technologies are the future for disabled people.”
Still, Cozea says that an informative online platform or an e-donations system for disabled people could prove more useful than the dating website. Moreover, Miuti says that online socialization should happen only on “normal social networks, the ones opened and known to all.”
“Disabled people need to be integrated into the large society and not encouraged to remain captive in the same disabled-only closed circle of people,” Miuti says.
But Radu says this is difficult.
“I think it is quite difficult for a disabled person to make it on the next level – the face-to-face meeting on a general dating website such as Facebook,” he says.
Popa also points out that DizabilLove.ro is not a network restricted to disabled people.
“Anyone can join – disabled or not – and I love that,” says Popa, who is not disabled.
On the other hand, Miuti is also suspicious of why people without disabilities would want to interact with disabled people.
“This is a real alarm, red flag!” she says. “Who are these ‘normal’ people, and which are their intentions? They might be slickers who want to take advantage of vulnerable disabled people.”
Moisei, who is not disabled, says meeting people from diverse backgrounds is always beneficial.
“I noticed disabled people have interesting things to say,” he says. “One can learn more from them than from ‘normal’ people,” he says.
Popa provides an example of how she was able to use the site to connect with a disabled girl named Iulia, as well as help Iulia connect with other disabled people by helping her find a local nonprofit organization where she could volunteer.
“Iulia wrote me about how hard it is for her to go through life with a physical disability,” she says. “She said she would love to be given the chance to meet and work together with other disabled persons.”
Popa says that Iulia’s message saying thank you melted her heart.
“I never had such a pleasant feeling, a mixture of joy and achievement!” Popa says.
Iliesi says the site can be the first step to remove barriers for disabled people in society.
“It’s true there are many physical barriers for disabled people living in Romania, but one can always achieve mental and emotional freedom!” she says.
Szabo says she is grateful to the website for helping her to make new friends and find love.
“DizabilLove.ro is a good thing,” she says. “People are no longer afraid to talk openly about themselves and their health issues.”
