Education for 50 disadvantaged Romanian children

For this report we would like to share with you the words of a young Romanian volunteer who lives near Panciu and is giving part of his free time to help the children of the Pinocchio Center.

Thanks to the European Solidarity Corps programme, since 2024 the Pinocchio Center has started hosting young Romanian and foreign volunteers for a volunteering period from a period of a few weeks up to 12 months.

Theo said: “For me, the Pinocchio Center is a home, a place where everything can be possible, the place where the hope never dies.
It is a home where children grow up and volunteers come and go offering the best they could. Pinocchio Center is a perfect place that brings people together. Now it is a beautiful part of my heart and a memory I will always keep in my mind.
I really want to do something useful, to make a change.
I'm here for helping and listening to the children. it's very important to have someone to communicate with, so I am trying to be as much open as possible with them, listening and pay attention to them.
Education is important as emotions as well.
I am learning from the energy of the kids. I am also practicing my patience and my creativity. Kids can teach you a lot, they surprise me often. When I'm having a bad day, they come to talk to me.

Sharing this experience with other volunteers coming from different countries is one of the most beautiful experience in my life. We become very close friends, and just the thought that they will leave at the end of the projects, makes me cry.
It's great to meet people you can get along, have fun and talk, and if you feel like you're part of a small family, it's just perfect.
Thanks to this experience I can say that I have learned to respect more the place where I live.
What really matters is that we are human and we can try together to do wonderful things. We help each other, live new experiences together and although we don't share the same language or the same traditions, we understand each other very well.
Sometimes it's enough for your soul to speak through looks.
People are different which is absolutely wonderful, if we were all the same, life wouldn't have that touch of madness that we need sometimes.”
(Theo, volunteer at the Pinocchio Center)

Thanks once again to Theo for his great help and to you for your valuable support