Break Poverty Cycle of Roma Children in Romania

After months and months of quarantine and restrictions, Care2Travel was able to organize 5 camps at the end of the summer vacation. Our very last camp and the highlight of the summer was our camp for the children in Csikszentdomokos village and the kids at the Szent Ferenc After School Club for Disadvantaged Children. In Hargita the majority of after school clubs are run by the Saint Franciscan Foundation and are located in small villages around the county. These clubs offer shelter and 1 hot meal for school kids from disadvantaged backgrounds after they finish school. There is usually 1 carer who prepares the food and helps the children with their homework and studies. Children are usually aged between 7-15 years old (1st to 8th grade). The children that attend this club are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Alcoholism is often the main problem as is a lack of education in the parents and also single-parent families with 1 parent often working abroad. The children can be mischievous but this is mainly because they do not receive much discipline and attention at home. Ultimately they are just like any child that when given attention and praise they thrive.

In this camp 4 international volunteers, Joy and Meggie from Germany, and Maude and Nell from Belgium worked together with 4 local volunteers to develop and facilitate exiting and fun activities for the children. We sincerely hope that we thought them more than just English.

We taught them teamwork by separating the big group of kids into smaller teams, then letting them choose a team name and making a group flag. We gave them responsibilities by letting them take the flag home and insuring they bring it back to the camp the next day.

Most days we started with a fun warm-up that ended with a fitness challenge. After that, we had an English writing quiz that had words that they learned from the previous day. The quizzes were scored in a way that was fair towards all kids, so spelling mistakes didn’t count, the word just had to be recognizable. We also taught them fair play by making sure each team had an equal chance of winning at the end of the week.

That being said we also taught them kindness by giving all the kids prizes at the end of the week. However, all we can really wish that we taught them is how to have fun and in doing so, they can learn so much more.