Disaster Response Romania Project #55605
Help for Ukrainian refugees
by Te Aud Romania
TAR Autumn Activities
By Gabriela Popescu - Project Leader
Dear supporter,
We continue the amazing work for the Ukrainian children in the region. Together with United Way Romania, we started Integration Without Borders project - intended to support the social integration into the community of approximately 200 Ukrainian children, who are currently based in Suceava county. The intervention is comprised of three integration camps, where we develop activities for 90 children, of whom 45 are Ukrainian children and 45 from the Romanian communities and vulnerable groups.
The theme of the camps are: Integration through Sport, Creative Sports and English learning. Two of the camps have been completed already, with the English Camp taking place at the end of November.
At the same time, through this project we will conduct nonformal education workshops for Ukrainian children and their parents.
We have attached below photos from our camps.
We have some great stories to share and some impression from both UA and Ro children, yet we will save those for when the project finishes.
Last week, we went to NGO LEADERSHIP WORSHOP, an intensive training session in Warsaw (Poland), on how we work with refugees, courtesy of Education for Democracy Foundation, University of Michigan Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and William Davidson Institute.
Latest news featuring our autumn activities
Making rugby proud
Rugby Club Gura Humorului
For the first time, Rugby Club Gura Humorului's match on the 4th June was live on Romanian national TV channel TVR1, starting 12:00. This is our first nationally broadcast match, bringing alongside it a lot of pressure and emotion for everyone involved.
In the next couple of weeks, we will face some of the toughest teams in Romania and our main priority is providing our supporters with good rugby, our players with improvement opportunities, with our player welfare in mind at all times.
Rugby for All
For Rugby for All, May meant several personal development meetings and a series of victories: U19 team gained 4th place nationally, while 8 of the players came out on the 3rd place nationally at U17.
Mini Rugby for All
Over May 2022, we continued with financial education workshops in several schools across Suceava county. Furthermore, we organized two tournaments, one at the beginning of May, with over 100 children, and the other is happening right now, for over 500 children.
Over 3 months of war
TAR has offered logistical, financial and humanitarian support over 900,000 Euros ever since the Ukrainian refugee crisis has started. All of this was made possible with support from individual donors, as well as a high number of national and international partners that have joined our endeavours.
As a charity focused on non-formal educational programs for children, we will work alongside national and international partners to develop medium to long term integration solutions to integrate Ukrainian refugee children within the community and provide a safe and appropriate environment to alleviate the pain.
Besides offering backpacks with essentials from both School in a Bag and Packed with Hope initiatives, we also organised the first swimming competition with both Romanian and Ukrainian children.
Mass-media overview
The initiative Packed with Hope was mentioned on the front page of Financial Times, and we talked with BBC Radio 4 about our activities regarding Ukrainian refugees.
Furthermore, several national TV stations have mentioned the importance of rugby and our work in Gura Humorului, for both children and Rugby Club Gura Humorului team.
Sneak peak into June
June 2022 will continue with the distribution of our fully equipped schoolbags in schools in Ukraine.
Steps towards the future program takes place in several schools to encourage children to discover more about themselves.
We are also in the process of organising a series of summer events = for both Ukrainian refugees and children from our communities: sport events and International Summer Camp, amongst others.
All of this was made possible with your support! Thank you!
About rugby for social impact
News interview on our first national rugby broadcast
Packed with Hope
28th February 2022, Dorset, England.
A 10-year-old boy named Luca returned home from school, having discussed about the armed conflict in Ukraine that had recently started.
Instead of doing his homework, Luca grabbed a napkin and imagined himself in the shoes of a Ukrainian child.
– Mummy, mummy, we have to do something to help them! Said Luca, as he handed over the composition to his mum.
Those words turned Grace, Luca's mom, into an army general, with a mission to develop a response to her son's request.
But Grace was not alone. So, for the following seven weeks, she gathered around her a proper army of people supporting this amazing initiative named Packed with Hope.
18th April 2022, Suceava, Romania.
Grace and a small part of the people that have supported her in the journey have landed in Suceava airport, for a week that was about to change not only their lives but also provide important resources for over 10,000 Ukrainian refugee children that are either residing or passing through Romanian borders.
All 10,000 backpacks that have reached Romania all the way from the U.K. are packed with goodies, essential items and educational books in Ukrainian for children, spread over 4 age groups: 0-4, 4- 8, 8 – 12, 12-16 years old. Resources within each backpack come from a variety of companies, including Hewlett Packard and an international publisher that, in record time, translated and printed a mother tongue book for children fleeing away from the war.
But above all, each and every one of those backpacks are Packed with Hope and carry a bit of Luca in them, as Luca inspired over 10,000 British children to write an honest thought of support for Ukrainian children to find within each and every backpack.
Grace (Little Toller Books ltd), Kevin Duffy (Bluemoose Books), Inna Bilonozhko, Ania Osipenko, Lucas Simon, Zoe Fox and Horatio Clare is the entire group that throughout the course of the past week have reached the hearts of hundreds of refugee children across Suceava. And this is only the start of it all.
It has been an intense week for everyone involved with amazing results:
Over 200 children across Suceava county have been delivered backpacks by Grace herself
Schoolinabag (Luke and Zoe) successfully equipped over 300 children, both in Ukraine and Romania, and set them ready for school
Packed with Hope spent two days at the border of Siret
And our promise, as their partner on the ground, is that a Packed with Hope backpack shall reach every Ukrainian refugee child that will pass through Romanian borders and every child that needs hope, now more than ever.
Our special thanks go to award winning writer and journalist Horatio Clare that has gone the extra mile, travelling in one of the lorries with the backpacks, to document it all, for a specially commissioned radio program for the BBC and for the Financial Times.
Every Ukrainian child is entitled to our support, protection, care and above all – our love.
BBC - Ukraine war: Refugee children to be sent 10,000 aid backpacks
BBC - Ukraine war: UK publishers take gifted books to children
Te Aud Romania has offered logistical, financial and humanitarian support over 850,000 Euros, ever since the Ukrainian refugee crisis has started. All of this was made possible with support from individual donors, as well as a high number of national and international partners that have joined our endeavours.
As a charity focused on non-formal educational programs for children, we will work alongside national and international partners to develop medium to long term solutions to integrate Ukrainian refugee children within the community and provide a safe and appropriate environment to alleviate the pain and grow.
Our response in figures
Over 100 individual cases solved
Over 700 children cared for
Over 1000 kits distributed
10 LifeStraw community purifiers sent to refugee camps across Romania and in Ukraine
1000 individual transit water purifiers distributed
Over 13 refugee centres that we are in close contact with to support with needs and requirements
One sports event for Ukrainian swimmers
Sneak peak into our coming month
May 2022 will continue with the distribution of our fully equipped schoolbags in schools where Ukrainian refugees started to study.
Furthermore, "Steps towards the future" program is taking place in several schools and encourage children to discover more about themselves.
We are organizing a series of summer events - for both Ukrainian refugees and children from our communities: sports events and the International English Summer Camp, among others.
Ukrainian children have learned to hate
UK publishers take books to children
Horatio Clare travels across Europe following the road to war
Unprecedent times
February 2022. The worst seemed behind us, and no one could have ever imagined something even worse than a pandemic. And the Ukrainian armed conflict emerged.
Located within 70 kms of the Ukrainian border, we have taken on, from the very beginning, the role of support organisation from everyone fleeing away from the conflict.
Whilst the first two weeks of our Ukrainian refugee crisis have been focused on providing immediate response solutions, coordination mechanisms have now started to work and whilst we are still continuing to provide immediate solutions to various situations, we are now at the same time, directing our attention to the development of medium to long term solutions. Because we are all in this within the long run.
Within the past month, TAR invested over 50,000 Euros as a response to the crisis. Our support has taken various forms, based on the correlated need from the ground: immediate response and support for individual refugee situations, accommodation within refugee centres, equipping refugee centres with necessary items, development of transit, baby and children kits, medicine and other medical necessities, transports over the border to support those still left in Ukraine and so on.
Te Aud Romania has offered logistical, financial and humanitarian support over 50,000 Euros, ever since the Ukrainian refugee crisis has started. All of this was made possible with support from individual donors, as well as a high number of national and international partners that have joined our endeavours.
Over 50 individual cases solved
Over 500 kits distributed
April 2022 shall mark the start of the distribution of our fully equipped schoolbags in schools where Ukrainian refugees started to study.
At the same time, alongside UK partners and institutional national partners, we shall provide the Siret border with over 10,000 goody transit bags for children, in accordance to age, as they cross the border.
Whilst we are constantly working on further integration measures and lifelong support.
Update on our past week - Ukrainian refugees
By Gabriela Popescu - Project Manager
Te Aud Romania (TAR) has rather quickly turned into a support organisation for Ukrainian refugees and we want to thank everyone that decided to join us on this journey.
Our charity has its main offices 70 kms from one of the borders and we are committed to create a response fund and provide ongoing support to facilitate their stay in the region for as long as necessary.
The past week has probably been one of the hardest weeks we have experienced in a long time. A time of incredible stress, constant dynamic and change and above all, a time of support.
This is a short update on our activity on the ground for the past week:
We are in constant and direct contact with more than 10 refugee centres and supply them with needs that are identified on an ongoing basis. The majority of these refugee centres are either private businesses (small hotels and/or guesthouses) that have put up their accommodation units up for free for the refugees and need constant support with food, medical and hygiene supplies.
We are part of the national coordination group that supports all Ukrainian refugees across the country, working closely with authorities and other NGOs involved in the process. We work together to connect and find solutions for the large number of issues that arise on a daily basis, with regards to the matter of the Ukrainian refugees.
We provide practical solutions and support to other charities, as well as connecting international supporters and companies with people on the ground, to facilitate better communication and support.
We are a support network for refugees and provide support to enquiries we get on a point by point basis. For example: we get enquiries from refugees to support with hosting and we connect them with other NGOs/ accommodation providers across the country, if the enquiry is not related to our area. If related to our area – we match them with an accommodation centre.
We have already started to integrate refugee mothers with children and had our first English reading activity for refugee children.
Alongside our UK partners from School in a Bag we will receive 600 fully equipped schoolbags in the coming two weeks to distribute to refugee children that intend to stay in Romania for indefinite periods of time.
LifeStraw pledged the shipping of 10 LifeStraw Community Purifiers and close to 1000 filter water bottles. Together we want to ensure that all refugees have access to safe water whether on the move or in a camp.
We have been in constant touch with Dr. Johannes Muller from Germany, representing Arbeitskreis Nord-Ost, who aims to deploy a truck of medical supplies (the biggest received in the area so far) so we can forward to our partner organisation that sends weekly humanitarian aid to Chernivtsi.
Our partners from Gooderaare putting together virtual cards and messages of support in both Ukrainian and English for refugees, to show them our constant support.
We work closely with local authorities to open up one more refugee centre in the area that can host 60 people and support them as well with their ongoing needs.
There is still a lot more to be done. Besides all of the above mentions, there is a constant need of hygiene products and baby products. We are on the look out for partners to put together personal care kits for women refugees and for their children, whether on the move or asylum seekers in Romania. These people need them now more than ever. One cannot even imagine what they are going through.
We aim to keep you posted as much as we can, whilst at the same time we want to protect the exposure of the refugees, considering the dramatic situation they are facing.
Amidst everything that is going on at the moment, we continue to run our programs as usual and take care of the ones within our regional community as well.
On the 5th March, the first rugby tag tournament from our Mini Rugby for all program took place in the village of Berchisesti, Suceava. With the support of the Romanian Rugby Federation and the county division for sport and youth, we have gathered together almost 100 children, aged 6 – 10, from 6 rural schools in Suceava county for a very fun and engaging indoor sport day. The event was facilitated by the School in Berchisesti and support from local sports teachers.
At the same time, the first week of March brought with itself group counselling activities for the rural schools in Dolhestii Mari and Dolhestii Mici, Suceava county. Children aged 6 to 16 years old have learned about bullying and its negative effects, as well as ways to nurture and develop a high self esteem from a young age.
Te Aud Romania
Location: Gura Humorului - Romania
Website: http:/​/​www.teaudromania.com
Gura Humorului, Romania
$10,600 raised of $100,000 goal
will provide a meal for a Ukrainian refugee
will provide food, water and supplies for a week
will pay their accomodation for a month
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