Bucharest, April 4, 2018 – In its 20 years of activity, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has invested nearly EUR 17 million in nationwide healthcare initiatives and more than 11 million in education, with programs funded in these two sectors comprising important components of social services and volunteering.
Since its establishment, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has been supporting complex healthcare programs, such as the building of the new Intensive care unit of the Marie Curie Hospital in Bucharest, the most up-to-date of its kind in Southeast Europe, representing an investment worth about EUR 1.8 million. Other sections of this hospital were also renovated or equipped with modern facilities. Additionally, The Foundation was involved in the fitting of the Emergency Room of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit and of the Cardiology Department of the Pediatric Section II of the Grigore Alexandrescu Emergency Hospital for Children, with the total allocated funding amounting to approximately EUR 400,000. Following the model of the Marie Curie project, the rehabilitation of the new intensive care unit of the Constanta County Clinical Hospital was started in 2017. A telemedicine solution will be implemented here, allowing the transmission of medical images and parameters in real time and the remote monitoring of patients’ vital signs. This will be the tenth telemedicine solution funded by the Vodafone Romania Foundation, the first being that implemented on SMURD ambulances, in 2005, a premiere in Romania at the time.
“In our 20 years of activity, we have launched many pioneering initiatives, we have supported innovative projects and bold enterprise, succeeding to involve an increasing number of partner organizations and volunteers from across the country. In time, our desire to do good deeds has turned into an everyday routine. In many of the projects that we have developed, we had technology on our side, whose power we are using to change the lives of people from communities around the country. Our Connecting for Good project is the best example of a program that puts technology in the service of children and adults suffering from serious illness, people living in isolated rural areas, people with diabetes, hearing or visual impairments, to mention just a few”, said Angela Galeța, Director of the Vodafone Romania Foundation.
One of the programs with a national impact is the Renovation and endowment of the blood donor’s circuit in the 42 blood transfusion centers in Bucharest and in the country. In this case the Foundation’s investment amounts to approximately EUR 1 million, the program being due o reach completion this year. As a result of the program, blood transfusion centers in Romania recorded a decline in the national average age of blood donors in 2016, for the first time since 1989. The Doctors Caravan is another national initiative the Foundation has been supporting annually, starting from 2016. Within the project, teams of 25-30 doctors and medical students travel every month to villages across the country in order to investigate and treat locals who do not have access to adequate medical tests and healthcare services. Thanks to the mobility concept allowing physicians to travel to remote areas, the caravan teams managed to visit 1,000 patients from 12 counties last year alone, to provide them with free specialist consultations.
The caravan concept has been replicated in many of the projects carried out in the span of 20 years. Merciluta Fairy, for example, is the first mobile dental office in Romania, providing free services to children from disadvantaged families. In 2017 alone, over 600 children from families in need have benefited from such services.
In the field of education, the Vodafone Romania Foundation supports the SMURD „Be Prepared!” Caravan, a mobile center providing training to the population in order to be able to deal with cases of emergencies. The project, which has so far had over 20,000 beneficiaries, was developed in partnership with the Foundation for SMURD and launched in 2005. Also in the field of education, the Foundation runs the Investing in Rural Areas national strategic program, which aims at facilitating access to education for all children regardless of their background. Through this program, launched in 2015, the Foundation has carried out total investments of over 1.3 million euros so far. Hundreds of scholarships have been awarded to rural school children and 13 „School after School” social centers are currently being financed by the Foundation, addressing 500 children from rural communities who are in risk of dropping out of school.
Volunteering is another strategic direction of involvement for the Vodafone Romania Foundation, besides healthcare, education and welfare. Starting 2015, the Foundation has been organizing at least two volunteering events monthly with the participation of Vodafone Romania employees. Last year, over 4,000 volunteers were involved in the activities organized by the Vodafone Romania Foundation and in the programs the Foundation supports in partnerships with non-governmental organizations from all the regions of the country.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental charitable organization, established in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the Vodafone Romania SA’s business. During its 20 years of activity, Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,104 programs run by 706 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. These projects had a total of 2.7 million beneficiaries – children, young and old people and physically, socially or economically disadvantaged people. So far, Vodafone Romania has invested over 28 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.
