Break Poverty Cycle of Roma Children in Romania

In 2020 Care2Travel is planning to organize 3 summer camps for the roma children of our town and surrounding villages, two of these will be residential. The residential camps need much higher financial involvement, but we receive this help from volunteers and the GlobalGiving funds will be just perfect to complete the budget.

The first camp will be very similar to the one we organized in 2019, and we are planning it to be at least of the same quality and if possible we want to involve even more kids.

For this we are communicating with the roma schools and teachers will assign those kids to our camp who need this inclusion the most. We are seeking kids between 8 and 15 years of age as this is the age group that can be affected the most by the benefits of our activities. The collaboration works great and we are looking forward to a successful camp right after the school year finished.

The two residential camps we are planning needs much more effort from our side, but it also makes a much higher impact on roma kids' life. For the first residential camp we will recruit a younger age group of 6-11, and for the second a group of 11-16 years olds with the help of the General Directorate of School Assistance and Child Protection of Harghita county.

The kids will be living for a full week with professional carers, trained coordinators and volunteers who will make sure they follow a healthy lifestyle by the following ways:

- organizing and facilitating summer camp style activities where kids can learn more about themselves finding out their strengths and weaknesses and will learn how to improve

- carers and volunteers will make sure, kids will do their chores (washing teeth, showering, wearing clean clothes, returning dirty dishes to kitchen, eating properly etc.) this way kids will get used with a normal lifestyle and will see how other people (volunteers, coordinators) maintain this continuously. Perhaps this will help them to understand the importance of cleanliness and self maintenance.

- planning to bring fun and joy into their life by organizing them well facilitated, high quality activities, like bowling, paintball, T-shirt painting, Yoga classes, Cross-fit games etc. this way they will feel as a regular kid and will be able to create bonds with other kids from an average background.

- during the camp they will be a part of a group of around 30 kids and 15 adults and to enjoy their time they will understand that they have to sustain positive attitude and initiate sustainable relationships with their peers and helpers. They will be in a situation where they will understand that they have to take responsibility for their actions. Probably this is the most important realization that they will go through and will help them to choose a path in their life that will lead to inclusion and success.

At the moment we are working to set up the above mentioned three camps by communicating with our partners, raising funds, reserving locations and accommodations, recruiting volunteers, researching games and activities, looking for possible dates etc.

We will have a much more settled and organized plan as time goes by.

After a successful summer Care2Travel started to focus on teaching and assisting during English classes of Roma children and organizing activities for them. There is a longer time gap until we can organize Summer camps again for these kids and we'd like to progress towards our goal of improving the English language skills of these kids so they can have more chances to be successful in life. Care2Travel´s project at the Xantus Janus school has begun this Fall. Starting in September 2019, volunteers are now working weekly with children in the school. At the moment we have 25 kids taking part of English sessions, ages between 6 and 8 and the class is organized twice a week. Our volunteers include a local volunteer, working as a translator, as well as a foreign volunteer who is a native English speaker. 

The primary focus is to spark an interest in the children to learn and speak English. Although it may not seem important at this young age, the hope is that having a native English speaker working with the class will help the students understand the importance of being able to speak English - and that it is a skill they may be able to use as they grow and move forward. We are able to provide these kids with native Enlish speaker volunteers which makes the kids more interested in their culture and personality. This way, using their curiosity towards the unknown and interesting, we can sparkle their interest to learn English so they will feel a need to immerse themselves into the language.

Students in the program are learning English from the beginning, starting with the alphabet. English is taught through singing, games, and drawing. During classes they learn basic english words using flashcards, stuffed animals, music and different kinds of visual aids. Sometimes the classrooms are divided into groups where they receive tasks they have to complete as a competition. During classes the local volunteer helps by translating between the native english speaker and the kids if needed, but we are trying to lead the kids into situations where they experience the pain of their lack of English language and feel the need to ask for specific word they want to translate, learn it, and say it back to the native speaker.

To involve native English speakers into the activity is also beneficial if we consider the fact that the kids have never really met people who don't understand what they say, just the English teachers, who only pretend that they don’t understand them. This way they will truly experience how it feels like not being understood by others.

This pilot program has been going well and the hope is that over time, and with additional support, the program can be replicated in all classes throughout the school. During vacations we'll be able to organize camp activities for the kids where they will be divided into mixed groups and will be able to compete with their fellow school kids using their English and life skills and win small prizes.