Mobile School - Education for Children in Romania

School is over for this part of the year and kids are in the summer vacation. A wonderful oportunity for us to see them in a more relaxed setup. We can now see more children at one activity, since they are not in school in the morning. We choose the morning, since it's not that hot. Druing mid day temperatures reached this year 40 degrees Celsius. On the other hand, a lot of them spend much more time unsupervised in the street, exposing themselves to more risks.

The project team visits each community at least once a week, bringing the Mobile School, but also an inflatable slider and toys. The purpose is to create an attractive activity for the kids so that they can enjoy their time spent with us, but also learn something in the process. At the same time, during the activity, the street educators learn a lot about the situation the children are facing in their families: poverty, in most cases, domestic violence, alcohool abuse, lack of proper hygiene means etc. For most children, the time they spend in our company is the only time of the week when they get to behave and be treated as children, when they get to play and learn in a secure environment.

With more than 30 activities with the Mobile School, we had reached more than 100 children in the two communities from Iasi. In average we had 25-30 children attending each activity and there have been almost 100 hours of activities in the community.

In the disadvantaged communities in our region, winter is a particular difficult time. With temperatures dropping to -20 degrees or even lower, families have extra duties to worry about. Living in improvised houses, with improvised stoves to get them heated, means that they need to invest a lot of time in procuring the necessary materials to burn, in order to keep the fire burning. And they need to keep it burning pretty much all of the time. For children it is equally difficult. They need to cross a field with half matter snow and no trails to get to school. They don't have proper clothing or shoes, and because there is no running water where they live, they also have a poor hygiene. All of these are reasons for the little ones to not be able to attend school on daily basis.

Because of the cold and the harsh conditions, during the winter time we decided not to have activities with the Mobile School outdoor, but to move the activities indoor, in our Educational Centers. The Educational Center is an intermediary phase between the activities in the street and the school. There, children can play, can watch cartoons, can do their school assignments, can talk to a specialist if the need to etc. There is also a lot of organized activities, where they learn and develop abilities, skills and knowledge that will help them integrate better. To keep them connected and motivated, the Educational Center runs every day from Monday till Friday, so children can attend educational activities even when we cannot use the Mobile School outside.

Usually, we start working with the Mobile School in April, depending on the weather. This year, winter was longer than usual, so the first outdoor activities were in May. That brought a lot of joy for the children in the two communities where we visited. It’s always a good opportunity for them to leave behind all difficulties they face and to connect with their childhood. In “Dallas” community we had in average 25-30 children attending every activity. In Cantemir community, we have 20-25 children attending every activity. There have been 10 activities with the Mobile School, where more than 70 children played, learned and had a good time. And the summer is just beginning.