Mobile School - Education for Children in Romania

We continued our nonformal activities with Mobile School weekly, in the same six locations: in Ses Bahlui with 40 children, Scheia with 107 children, Schitu Duca with 107 children, Rediu with 107 children, Ceplenita with 35 children and Raducaneni with 48 children between the ages of six and fifteen. The main themes we focused on, were literacy, mathematics, creativity, psychomotor skills, social skills, algorithms, associations, and personal hygiene.

Ses Bahlui is our long-term project and is the location we have been going to for 17 years. At the moment, we collaborate with parents or grandparents who, in the past, were 12 or 15 years old and participated in our activities. The dropout rate for children living in the Ses Bahlui area is very high, that's why we continue to go into the community with Mobile School. The main objective is to help children develop some skills and raise their self-esteem so that they do not drop out of school.

In the educational center, we have an after-school program with 26 children from 1st to 5th grade. The children come daily and in addition to the homework help they receive there, the educators organize non-formal activities on various topics such as creativity, bullying, art, science experiments, self-esteem and children's rights.

Also, during the summer period, we organized a summer kindergarten with 16 children from disadvantaged families from Ses Bahlui, who had never been to kindergarten before. These are some of the themes that were addressed: forming and maintaining routines, geometric shapes, color association, practicing the concepts of length, weight, height, size, human body, motor exercises, means of transport, emotions, and professions. During summer kindergarten, the social worker tries to enroll the children in kindergarten, which starts in Romania in September. This is a long process because we have to convince parents to let their children go to kindergarten. After that, the social worker finds a kindergarten that has places available and helps the parents with the documents. This year, we managed to enroll 5 children to kindergarten.

Thanks to your help, we were able to help 104 children with the educational materials they need at school. The beginning of school is a difficult time for most families who do not have financial resources, because they have to buy the resources needed for school activities every year.

Thank you for being with us!

Links:

• Our facebook page

In the last three months, we continued our activity with the Mobile School mainly outdoors, combining educational activity with games. The main themes we focused on, were literacy, mathematics, creativity, psychomotor skills, social skills, algorithms, associations, and personal hygiene. We supported activities in six locations in Iasi, five of which are in the countryside. We work with 40 children from Ses Bahlui, 107 children from Scheia, 107 children from Schitu Duca, 107 children from Rediu, 35 children from Ceplenita, 48 children from Raducaneni and 52 refugee children.

Group activities are a real challenge in our work, as children tend to be very competitive and individualistic. They don't understand that they have to work together to accomplish a task. We've noticed this in every community we go to, even if it's just a game or an educational activity. Cooperation is not learned in the family environment, and the school environment doesn’t promote this type of activity. Our goal is to encourage cooperation and teamwork through educational games with children.

In addition to our activity in the countryside, we also continued our activity in the educational center. There, they find constant support whenever they need it. For example, we started collaborating with a dental clinic, which treats children who do not have a financial situation that would allow them to do so. Most of the children we work with, have never been to the dentist before and have real dental problems. With the help of this clinic, we were able to provide dental care for approximately 20 children from underprivileged areas and we aim to continue this support as much as we can.