Education for 50 disadvantaged Romanian children

During this second trimester at the Socio-Educational Centre Pinocchio, the educational and recreational activities went on regularly. The local staff, with the support of young Romanian and international volunteers, continued its work of scholastic support and non formal education workshops, as well as the canteen service providing daily a hot lunch and a genuine snack to the 50 beneficiaries of the Centre Pinocchio.

For what concerns the activities of scholastic support, every day after lunch, children are divided into three groups:

• “grupa mica” (the little ones): two Italian volunteers - Alice and Chiara -, with the supervision of the educator Monica, prepare early literacy introduction activities for children aged 3-6 years old. The aim is helping them getting ready for school, specifically getting ready to read, to recognize colours, numbers, sounds and letters, to express themselves through paintings. Every child has a personal notebook, where the volunteers and the educator daily prepare entertaining and coloured exercises on the basis of individual needs and potentials. The idea is to prevent reading and writing difficulties, and to prepare young children for kindergarten;

• “grupa mijlocie” (the middle ones): the educator Monica is in charge of the scholastic support for children aged 7-9 years old. Her group is composed both by children that regularly attend school (and thus have less difficulties in their learning path) and by children who often skip lessons or have already abandoned school due to difficult socio-educational backgrounds. Monica daily support afterschool activities, but also prepares targeted exercises for those children with learning difficulties. The idea at the basis of these activities is to help children with homeworks, but also to support the ones who dropped out school;

• “grupa mare” (the big ones): the educator Diana is in charge of the scholastic support for children aged 10-16 years old. Her group presents the same composition and challenges of the previous one. The educators' commitment towards the scholastic support of all children is that education is the most powerful instrument we have in order to foster social inclusion and fight against discrimination. A children that learns to write and read, to stay together with his/her peers, to express opinions and feelings will be an adult aware of his/her rights and duties, inserted in the social context and able to build positive relationships with other people.

In these three months, at the Centre Pinocchio the local staff organized also interesting recreational moments for children and their families. First of all, spring came together with “Mother's Day”: on the 11^th March, in order to make mums feel at home, the staff decided to organize an informal meeting of sharing and exchange. A coffee and a snack has been served and then a moment for discussing together abouth their children (difficulties, school, attitudes...); the cook the Centre, Veornica, then prepared a lunch and a traditional sweet. Women have been pleasantly surprized by this day fully dedicated to them.

On the 8^th April, boys of the Centre Pinocchio have been the protagonists of a show organized at County level on the occasion of the International Roma Day. They started with a traditional Roma dance, that little by little transformed into breakdance. For the children, this has been an unforgettable day: not so often, indeed, it happens that people pay attention to them, make an applause and recognize their value. April also reserved another surpise for the children of the Centre Pinocchio: on the 22^nd, a theatre company was invited to the Centre Pinocchio and performed an entertaining show with magic, puppets and fairy tales.

At the beginning of May, we celebrated the Orthodox Easter with cooking workshops. Children painted the traditional red eggs and prepared fruit salad, sweet pastries and “Cozonac”, the traditional Romanian dessert for religious festivities.

Last but not least, on the 1^st June the Municipality of Panciu celebrated the International Children's Day. Centre Pinocchio participated to the event, dressed up children with colourful masks and toook part to the city's children parade. Children also received special gifts and were offered with a wonderful cake made by the Centre's cook.

Therefore, these three months have been full of recreational occasions for the children of the Centre Pinocchio. Our commitment is to make them feel like children: too often their childhood is stolen, they are oblige to face life like adults, being exposed to a socio-educational context made of poverty, scholastic drop-out, social exclusion.

Global Giving's donations supported Centre Pinocchio's commitment for the education of these disadvantaged children and their families. The donations we received helped us organizing the above mentioned activities (purchase of educational/didactic material, organization/participation to educational events), as well as guaranteeing the daily canteen service.