Child sponsorship 2009 update from Bucharest, Romania

Dear friends around the world,

As we were anticipating in the last letter, this past summer has proved everything that our children hoped for and more!

Considering that this was the last summer with the SOS Family in the Village for over 20 teenagers, it made everything even more special. Before the school started, the 20 teenagers have moved to the two Youth Facilities in Bucharest, where they will complete their journey towards adulthood.

Another fact that has contributed to the success of this summer holyday was that literary all the staff members of the Village got involved. This was because in the beginning of the spring two of our colleagues have decided to further develop their professional career in other workplaces and, even if they are still friends of the programme, we had to fill in the gap. Confronted with this reality, the Children's Village staff has behaved admirably, exactly as any other true community would have- everybody offered to take part or to organise activities for the children, in order to minimize the loss of our good colleagues. As a consequence, the Village Master, the electrician, the driver, the social worker, our assistant manager, mothers, aunties, housekeepers and I, we all have taken part in this year’s summer vacation plan for the children in the Village.

But as in any good story, let’s start with the beginning: to kick off the summer vacation in a great spirit, we have celebrated the 1st of June, what we celebrate as the International Children’s Day. Since not all of the activities that we wanted to offer our children could fit in just one day, we have expended it to four. During these days we had: a catch and release fishing competition, an entire day of activities with the Playbuss, our social animation programme, when we took over the parking lot of Bricostore to the great amusement of their staff and clients, a wonderful Fairytale Carnival, staged for us by the little elves and princesses in the SOS Nursery School.  We were also invited to visit the local Police Station. Off course that such a visit could only be perfect if our children were picked up and dropped off with police cars that, at the children’s request set their lights and sirens off to the bewilderment of the on-lookers. In the same afternoon the Playbus delighted our children and all the children in the Plumbuita Park (one of the many beautiful parks of Bucharest), with fun and games. And, because such a wonderful sting of activities have to end in a similar way, the last event completely fulfilled all the expectations: an entire afternoon of friendly and fun competitions, a clowns and joggling show (performed by teenagers from a partner organisation), with a charming puppet show at the end. To conclude, this was one of the best 1st of June ever that our children had.

The rest of the vacation was equally loaded with great moments: All the children went on boat trips on Herastrau (a nice lake in the center of the city), went on day trips at a water amusement park and at the swimming pool. We have also continued our partnerships with two of the Museums in Bucharest - the Village Museum and the Geology Museum. Thanks to these partnerships, the children took part in courses held by the specialist from these two institutions, learning more about the history of our planet, the lost world of the dinosaurs, how to model clay figures, paint on glass, and make small pieces of jewelry, traditional masks and wood carving.

Also during these last months, the Big Brother programme developed substantially, due to the many volunteers that our programme has won lately. Through this programme we try to offer our children positive role models, persons that they can look up to and which can give them the confidence that their dreams can become reality.

Another highlight of this vacation was the trip at the seaside. Each child made a personal choice if they want to go with the other teenagers in the Village or together with their SOS family. The trip organised by the Village Staff sacrificed comfort for adventure and freedom. Sleeping in tents pitched right on the beach, cooking by the fire, waking up early in the morning to watch the sunrise made all the effort worthwhile. For the ones that chose to go with the rest of the SOS family it was equally delightful to spend time with their SOS mother in a different setting then in the Village, with all the SOS brothers and sisters around them.

Additionally to the “standard” seaside trip, with the help of the owners of a nice hotel on the Black Sea Coast, eastern Romania - friends of our programme, we were able to reward the children with excellent school results. Needless to say, that the four lucky ones came back with hearts full of joy and with the summer sun in their eyes. After the last year’s trip in Croatia and this year’s vacation on the Black Sea Coast we’re looking forward to seeing the friendly competition in academic results for the next year.

For practical reasons, we’re not able to get into details about all the other activities that our children had during the summer, but we will, at least enumerate them: five families took trips to the Carpathian Mountains, all the children took part in football and basketball training sessions, both in the Village and at sport clubs outside, helped the maintenance team with the landscaping of our yard, the Playbus had weekly activities opened for all of them and the computer club was also high on the demand list of the children.

All in all this past summer was an excellent example of how a small community like ours can join efforts in covering all the needs of the children, while re-living our own childhood along with them.

With friendship,
Alin Paun
Village Director, SOS Children’s Village Bucharest