More than 100 children from migrant families were involved within the pilot project –School and community – initiated by Soros Foundation Romania, as a result of our efforts to build a socio-educational model of work in the communities with a high number of children at risk.

“In Marginea village, just one parent or sometimes just some distant relatives care for children. Lack of care is the main reason children fail in their studies or abandon school. Because I’m one of these children that live with their grandparents, and they have always encouraged me to study, I participated in this project because I want to give all the support they need to the children that are not motivated to continue and succeed in their studies” a 6^th grade student involved in the “School and Community” project declared.

During the project we followed two directions:

•  Improving the interactions between the members of the communities 
• Financing small projects and local initiatives

 

Improving the interactions between the members of the communities

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• SFR implemented the project in three communities from different regions of the country: Glimboca (Caras-Severin County), Marginea (Suceava County) and Prejmer (BraÈ™ov County)
• The local teams were constituted from teachers (mainly) and one community facilitator in each place
• These local teams were provided two workshops and training – dedicated to the improvement of their abilities to run the local projects (some of approached themes were: finding and using wisely local resources, SWOT analysis of the teams, project management, ways of using non-formal methods in the activities with the children).
• All the local actions were supposed to bring and involve actively other members of the community (the children from the project distributed promotional materials, posters were put to the City Hall, there were sent official invitations)
• There were organized common meetings: school representatives and local authorities representatives; the community facilitator had regular visits in the community, as his role was to support the local team in the implementation phase of the project or the in organizing the meetings with the local authorities.

 

Financing small projects and local initiatives

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We specially focused on the development of the community social capital, starting from initiatives dedicated to the children from these communities:

• SFR carried on, in partnership with the secondary schools from the three communities (Primary and Secondary School Glimboca, Primary and Secondary School Prejmer and the School for Arts and Professions Marginea), projects in which were involved children from migrant families but not only
• The type of the activities to which children took part and worked on: creating handmade objects (tailoring, knitting twigs, pottery, painting, realizing the scale model of the village), dance classes (traditional dance class, modern dance class), journalism, theatre (classic, with puppets), meteorology, ecology, publications (the monograph of Marginea village, school magazine in Prejmer folklore collection), health (fast-food vs. healthy food, hygiene).
• 45 of the most involved and hard working children were rewarded with one-week camp based on adventure education in Straja Mountain.
• Results on local level: a new traditional dances group in Glimboca (pictures attached), realizing the unofficial monograph of Marginea; the Interethnic Festival from Prejmer – children had an important role within these activities, as they were responsible of many of them: they had the chance to take organizational decisions and effectuated a great part of the materials used –with the support of the teachers).

The involvement of school in the community does not have to be reduced to projects ran by school and the other members of the communities to be only spectators. The participation of the entire community, to such communities, is vital for the success of the socio-educational intervention and for their unity, ability to deal better with situations or problems (that are of interest for everybody). To get to this success a long term intervention is needed, as the mobilization of a community (that is not in a risky situation and does not see a clear and concrete reason to get together and take action), means more efforts from the one that implements communitarian projects.

Our purpose, during the two years of the project, was to get to a bigger interactivity and pro-activity from and between the members of a community.

One of the preliminary conclusions of the project is that there still is a “distance” between school and the community: school still remains the only factor responsible with the children’s education (during classes, but also after school), in a way in which it is perfectly normal that all the projects done with and for children to be carried on by school and the others members of the community just to assist (to different events like festivals, etc.). The active involvement of the parents and other people from a community is still low.

But, we can say that a part of the results obtained within the project showed us that is not impossible or so hard to get to a better mobilization of the community.

School and community Project it continues in 2010 also, and this year we are going to collaborate with the Education Support Program to the development of the socio-educational model initiated by Soros Foundation Romania within the three communities.