Bucharest, 29 September 2020 – Vodafone Romania Foundation launches the platform https://scrisoripentrumoscraciun.ro/, a free tool for managing letters sent to Santa Claus by children from disadvantaged communities in Romania, which also allows the identification of potential donors. The platform is web-based and can be accessed by NGOs and companies by creating an account. It was developed and piloted in 2019, when 699 letters were registered for the first time, later taken over and realized by donors from 19 companies.
“Over time, we noticed that every year, at Christmas, some communities had many gifts for children, and others had less or no gifts at all. For this reason, we found it useful to develop a tool that would bring together the letters of all these children in one place and allow them to be taken over and realized in a safe and transparent way by as many generous people as possible, that want to become Santa Claus for them. The application we launched is based on over 10 years of experience in such projects and represents our hope that the wishes of as many children in Romania as possible will be fulfilled at Christmas. Therefore, we encourage NGOs and companies to use the platform starting this year,” said Angela Galeța, Manager of the Vodafone Romania Foundation.
The Letters for Santa platform is addressed to NGOs that have children as beneficiaries and that want the little ones to receive a beautiful, carefully prepared gift, but also to companies that want to offer their employees the chance to become Santa Claus for these children.
For NGOs, the platform is an easy tool for managing letters and accessing donors from several companies, to realize the wishes of the little ones. Donors are trustworthy, being endorsed by the companies they work for, and after allocating the letters, the NGOs can interact directly with them, without intermediaries. In addition, the platform provides real-time reports on letters and donors.
Interested companies can involve their employees in a no-cost CSR project, join one or more NGOs and have access to reports on the number of employees involved in the project and the number of children helped.
Donors can easily choose the letter of the child for whom they want to become Santa Claus directly from the platform and receive by e-mail, in a centralized manner, all the necessary information about the child and the location where the package would be sent, and are sure that the gifts will reach the recipient.
The Letters for Santa Claus program was launched in 2010, initially, for children benefiting from the projects carried out by the Vodafone Romania Foundation, and with the participation of Vodafone employees who wanted to bring joy to children, at Christmas. In 2016, the circle of donors expanded by encouraging employees of other companies to join the project and become Santa Claus for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The current platform, https://scrisoripentrumoscraciun.ro/, represents a new expansion of this program, both in terms of the number of beneficiaries and the number of donors.
Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian non-governmental organization, with charitable status, distinct and independent of the company’s commercial operations, established in 1998. In over 20 years of activity, Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,168 programs conducted by 745 non-governmental organizations across the country, in the health, education, healthcare services industry. The projects had over 3 million beneficiaries – children, young people, elderly, physically, socially or economically disadvantaged people. So far, Vodafone Romania Foundation invested EUR 31 million in projects conducted by partner non-profit organizations.
More details about the foundation’s programs are available at fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatiavodafone.ro/ and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone.
