Our MAJOR EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

We started our first successful project in July 2022. When the war hit, thousands of refugees had fled to Moldova looking for shelter. Some of them moved forward, most of them stayed. People who could afford a rent, stayed in the city. Others had to be housed in the villages, with host families. Many times in houses with no facilities at all, like toilet or shower. Local people have been living like that for so many years. Kids co-sleeping with each other, adults sleeping on the floor. Having the luxury of their own corner, was never even an option for those poor children. Hancesti, a Moldovan town of about 4,000 people (about 20 miles south of the Moldovan Capital (Chișinău) is housing & supporting 130 Ukrainian Refugee families. Based on the information provided by the Local Government. All of them are people from vulnerable families, so until the war is ended, they have no other place to go. There are about 50 Ukrainian kids from those families who had attended 5 months of Summer School, last year, with the support of our generous donors from USA. All of them came back to the classes again this year, for a period of 6 months already. Clarification: The kids are supposed to have online classes, from the Ukrainian schools, but this is just a formality. Most of them don’t have laptops, phones, or, at least, basic internet acces. On the other side, even in the cities, due to the unstable situation in Ukraine, the teachers often can’t go on-line to provide the classes.

The Day Center for children is operated in two shifts. The kids are coming for classes in the afternoon. There are 2 hired Teachers, one cook, two local managers and 1 administrator plus volunteers who come to help out. The kids are served 1 meal per day and snacks that are available during the day. Besides classes, the kids have many extra activities, such as crafting, playing outside, a lot of toys and table games, kindly donated by individual people and other NGO’s. Unfortunately, we are forced to stop the activity of the kids club during winter, as paying the gas bill, is still something we can’t afford. The only option left for the cold period, is take-away hot meals, once a day. For the current situation, we cope with feeding 130 people on a daily basis at the Center, including elderly, children and unemployed. This operating model has proved itself very eficient, that’s why we intent to open 2 more centers like this in two other locations, where a big number of refugees is concetrated, in the nearest future . As a long term plan, we would like to have 15 centers all around the country, as an opportunity to education for every child.