Shape the future of a child in rural Romania!

Summer has passed so fast for the Teach for Romania team, whose number of members increased exponentially, due to the Leadership Summer Academy. After six week of assiduous work, 268 hours of training in total, 43 new teachers were united under the same mission: quality education for all children in Romania.

The boot camp involved four weeks of theoretical courses, when, helped by our trainers, the participants developed skills as planning, organizing and coordinating activities, improving their self-leadership. After gathering so much information and gaining more experience, day after day, they managed to find the courage to face any obstacles , wishing to make a difference not only in the Romanian educational system, but in the community they live in and  in some children’s lives. They learned teaching means perseverance, the capacity to find solutions and to auto-analyze. The last two weeks were the practical part of the Summer Academy, where we created the right environment for the participants to understand the challenges they might encounter while being teachers and to get to know the world their future pupils live in. Teachers worked together with 22 pupils in order to organize the activities which took place during those two weeks, actively involving the children and giving them the opportunity to develop their leadership capacities while volunteering in their community. Parents are also a huge part of the educational process, therefore we spoke to more than 50 parents about the relationship they have with their little ones and helped them understand better the needs they have. Two schools, two different communities, 370 kids and more than 200 sessions with them are the figures which describe best those two weeks.

Time flew and the bell rang again, Teach for Romania starting its official third year of activity. The beginning of a new school year always comes along with excitement for everyone, children, parents, grandparents, teachers, no matter of their ethnicity, religion or social class, making all of them  to  see life in a more optimistic light, to hope for the better. This year we sent 63 passionate teachers to inspire in 30 schools located in vulnerable environments around the country. 6500 children will beneficiate of quality education, fact which makes our goal seem more and more tangible, thanks to all those who sustained us so far.