Over 1000 children and youngsters benefited from Together for a better life in Castelu & Together for a better future in Coroieni projects

01.02.2023

In 2021 and 2022 we ran two big projects through which we provided grass-roots integrated services in two extremely poor communities (education, health care, social services for over 1000 people). We documented our interventions and challenges met by local teams, and we made proposals to improve public anti-poverty policies at national level.

Now we take a look at what we achieved. We are proud that so many children enrolled and attended school with our support. They overcame their limits within the running events we organised for them, by going to summer camps where they had the chance to discover new places and rediscover themselves through adventure. We are proud we created integrated teams which proved efficient in designing and implementing interventions for very difficult cases. 

We would like to thank all our partners, our supporters and the families and children we worked with for the trust they invested us with. We had a long road ahead, we had a pandemie to fight, and we managed to bring a change for the better in the lives of Castelu and Coroieni. 

We are going to continue our work in Castelu and Coroieni – Ponorata and we will need your help more than ever, now that an important funding has come to an end. Please support our work! Click HERE. Thank you!

In short, a few results

EDUCATION

  • 400 children (about 200 from each community) attended our afterschool classes, fast-literacy and personal development bootcamps, sports clubs, and summer camps.
  • 61 young people (27 from Castelu and 34 from Coroieni) got involved in the Youth Club. 
  • 11 young people from Coroieni attended literacy classes. 
  • 320 parents (95 from Castelu and 225 from Coroieni) came to parent-teacher meetings and individual discussions.
  • in Ponorâta we continued to offer scholarships to high-school kids.

HEALTH

  • 346 girls and women (175 in Castelu and 171 in Coroieni) attended women-hygiene classes, child-care workshops and/or individual breast-feeding counseling sessions. In both communities, the number of minor mothers is HUGE – and their average age for giving birth to their first child is now at 14 years old!
  • in Castelu we continued our long-term health program, helping impoverished children and mothers be seen by specialized medics, do medical tests and surgeries, when needed, and we helped them buy medicine for treatments they cannot afford.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

  • 33 people from the marginalized communities (18 in Castelu and 15 in Coroieni) got involved in Local Initiative Groups. One woman from the poor community in Castelu and two from Ponorâta were hired in our projects.
  • 10 community events gathered over 1690 people from the two villages (890 in Castelu and 800 in Coroieni):
    • 4 Education Relays
    • 2  community events on multiculturality
    • 3 medical caravans with the help of Caravan with Medics Association
    • 1 cleaning the village action in Coroieni – Ponorata

We would also like to mention that in Ponorata:

  • we helped families with seeds to cultivate vegetable gardens (these look great too, it’s the third year they are doing it).
  • we offered again Christmas packages to all families who sent their children to school and kindergarten (at least 70% attendance rate).

SOCIAL SERVICES

We encouraged a structured, regular way of working for the multidisciplinary local teams (social workers, health community nurse, school mediator), which followed the case management method (individual intervention plans for each family and constant monitoring of progress in solving difficult situations). We tested this method for 60 vulnerable families (30 in each community) and we began to see that their access to services (identity documents, health care, education programs etc.) increased.

ADVOCACY

We documented our steps and challenges met on the way, in these communities, and we consulted with county and national authorities regarding ways in which they could support local teams in helping vulnerable people solve their most complex or pressing social problems.

We analyze our results and the lessons learnt. We continue our work in the communities and we collaborate with the local, regional and national authorities in order to solve the problems in the system, looking up at four important components: social services, education, health, and community development. At the same time, we keep our efforts in turning our experience in the field into policy papers meant to help all people living in poverty. 

Nadia Gavrilă, President Reality Check

We invite you to watch a short video on the huge importance education has for the most impoverished children of Romania: