- Total donations of approximately € 78,000 for the 2017 edition of the „Letters for Santa Claus”
- The children come from 26 communities from Bucharest and from 16 counties in Romania
Bucharest, December 12, 2017 – a total of 1,000 children from social care and foster centers from 26 disadvantaged communities around the country will be receiving the Christmas gifts they wished for, with the help of the approx. 1,100 volunteers of the „Letters for Santa Claus” caravan, the largest volunteer program of the Vodafone Romania Foundation. Most of the children, i.e. 339, are in communities in the western region of the country. The total donations collected this year for the gifts reached almost 78,000 euros.
To let him know their wishes for Christmas, the little ones wrote letters to Santa, which were then collected, scanned and uploaded by the caravan team via an application specifically developed for this program, so the letters could be read by volunteers. The gifts will be delivered to children during five regional events the Vodafone Romania Foundation will be organizing in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Constanta and Iasi, with the last three cities being included in this program for the first time in 2017.
To collect the wish-letters from all the 1,000 children, the „Letters for Santa Claus” caravan has traveled nearly 4,000 km in the span of two weeks, passing through Bucharest and 16 counties of Romania – Alba, Argeş, Bacău, Bihor, Botoşani, Buzău , Cluj, Constanta, Gorj, Iasi, Ilfov, Prahova, Suceava, Timis, Tulcea and Vrancea. By the end of the 2017 edition of the program, the caravan will have traveled 12,000 km in total this year.
At this year’s edition of the program, employees from eight companies and non-governmental organizations have joined the Vodafone Romania Foundation as donor-partners, preparing gifts for 318 children out of the total 1,000 children.
At its eighth edition in 2017, the „Letters for Santa Claus” national program has grown from year to year, thanks to partnerships engaged with more than 100 non-governmental organizations across the country so far, thus reaching more and more deprived communities. This year, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has managed to add eight more communities on the caravan map, with the number of children to receive gifts from Santa increasing by 400 vs 2016.
From 2010, the year of its launch, the „Letters for Santa Claus” caravan has reached so far a total of 3,100 children from underprivileged communities across the country. The total amount of donations made during all these years by volunteers for the purchase of the gifts for the little children stands at almost 200,000 euros
The Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental charitable organization, set up in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the Vodafone Romania SA’s business. During its 19 years of activity, Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,046 programs run by 660 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. These projects had a total of 2 million beneficiaries – children, young and old people and physically, socially or economically disadvantaged people. So far, Vodafone Romania has invested over 26 million euros in projects run by nonprofit partner organizations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available at fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatia-vodafone.ro/ and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone.
