At the 20th anniversary edition of the Gala,
Vodafone Romania Foundation Launches “School in a Box”, a New National Education Project Based on the Latest Teaching Technology
- The project in which the Foundation will invest EUR 420,000 starts in 10 rural schools
- Eight prizes awarded at the event to partner organizations and people engaged in community activities
Bucharest, October 11, 2018 – The Vodafone Romania Foundation has launched “School in a Box”, a new national education project that integrates state-of-the-art teaching technology to improve students’ school attendance and performance and provide modern teaching aids to teachers. The project features an innovative concept based on a complete kit of IT equipment placed inside a box (hence the name of the project), specifically designed to allow the setting up of a digital classroom in just a few minutes, anywhere, including in remote areas. The Vodafone Romania Foundation grants EUR 420,000 to the new project, under the Connecting for Good program. The “School in a Box” project is being implemented in partnership with the World Vision Foundation Romania.
The “School in a Box” uses modern digital materials, all integrated into a dedicated e-learning platform, including interactive teaching methods tailored to students’ current needs. The project will be implemented during the school year 2018-2019, in 10 schools from disadvantaged rural communities in the counties of Cluj, Braşov, Vâlcea, Olt, Dolj, Ilfov, Ialomiţa, Constanţa, Vaslui and Iaşi. It is estimated that a total of 5,000 school children will benefit from the support provided by this project.
“We are glad to launch at this anniversary edition of the Gala a new strategic project that proposes a solution to one of the biggest problems identified in the field of education: access to quality education for children from disadvantaged communities. It is yet another example of a project that resorts to high technology to improve people’s lives in these communities”, says Angela Galeța, Director of the Vodafone Romania Foundation
The materials to be used in the teaching process cover Romanian language and Mathematics, two of the disciplines included in the curricula for the high school admission exam. The educational content is based on the national curricula for school grades I-VIII, approved by the Ministry of National Education. Each of the ten IT teaching boxes, one for each of the ten schools included in the project, contains a laptop for the teacher, 25 tablets for the students, a projector, a sound system, a built-in equipment loading solution, a built-in wi-fi router and a 4G modem. Tablets can be connected to the laptop, enabling teachers to share educational content and applications with their students.
The project also includes several teacher training sessions, designed to help teachers become familiar with the modern IT solutions and teaching methods, tailored to the current needs of children. The dedicated online platform integrates learning management tools that will allow teachers to design and manage their lessons and to monitor and evaluate students’ results. For the “School in a Box” project the Vodafone Romania Foundation will deploy a team of over 200 volunteers.
Each year the Vodafone Romania Foundation Gala recognizes the contribution of its partner NGOs and volunteer teams to the running of the Foundation’s programs, in the form of prizes awarded to projects and volunteer teams obtaining remarkable results in the Foundation’s four strategic investment areas: health, education, social services and volunteering. The prizes at this anniversary edition have been awarded for the whole collaboration the Foundation has had over its 20 years of activity with partner NGOs, namely to the Hercules Association (Education Prize), the SMURD Foundation (Health Prize), the Mihai Neşu Foundation (Social Services Prize), the Little People Association (Volunteering Prize). For the 20 years of activity dedicated to the community, in collaboration with the Vodafone Romania Foundation, four special prizes have been awarded to: Maria Culescu, the President of the MAME Association, Dr. Raed Arafat, the President of the Board of Directors of the SMURD Foundation, Dr. Cătălin Cîrstoveanu, Head of the Newborn Intensive Care Department of the “Marie Curie” Hospital in Bucharest and to Sorin Marinescu, social worker at the Princess Margareta of Romania Foundation.
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 Foundation 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.
