For a third consecutive year, Hope and Homes for Children and PEPCO Romania continue their partnership to prevent the separation of children from their family through interventions to prevent school abandonment and support the social inclusion of disadvantaged children, with a new sponsorship of 75,000 Euros. A total of 130 children from 11 counties and Bucharest will receive support, starting this month and ending with September 2021, in the form of school supplies, computers, school books and other educational materials, as well as clothing, footwear and hygiene products.
The new sponsorship will continue this year’s interventions, when 160 vulnerable children from Bacău, Bihor, Bistrița, Botoșani, Hunedoara, Iași, Ilfov, Maramureș, Neamț, Sibiu, Suceava and Bucharest were supported to remain with their parents and not abandon school. It will also support the design of new learning areas for children in their own homes (for example the renovation and/or equipping of the study room). Starting this spring, for instance, 4 school-aged children in Suceava, who lived together with their parents and grandfather in 2 rooms, without even a desk to do their homework on, now have their own learning area once the renovation and equipping of one of the rooms took place.
Starting in 2019 until now, a total of 280 children at risk of early school dropout were supported to continue their education as part of our partnership with PEPCO Romania. By receving educational counselling and material support, these children’s families benefitted from the help they needed to ensure their children have a suitable environment for their educational activities.
“In a disadvantaged family, the reasons why a child drops out of school much too early are both common and worryingly varied. It could be the lack of school supplies, the lack of a place in the house where they can study or the fact that they have no access to basic utilities, much less to tablets for online school. Because of the pandemic, the shortages have become even more acute among poor families this year. The support from PEPCO Romania is now much more important, because it helps us intervene where the need is the greatest, when more and more families become poorer and poorer. Thank you for a long-term partnership and impact!” – Robert Ion, Fundraising Director, Hope and Homes for Children Romania
PEPCO Romania joins the appeal launched by Hope and Homes for Children this fall, through the “Price of Doing Good” campaign, which is a wake-up call concerning the increasingly higher number of children who risk to be separated from their parents and end up in orhpanages, given the pandemic and extreme poverty faced by the vulnerable families without any employment. With the message “Extreme poverty gradually separates children from their parents, until the separation is complete. Help them remain together!”, the Foundation appeals to companies and individuals alike, so that other children do not replace those that are still in orphanages, once family-type alternatives are found for the latter.