We have spoken with Cristian Ispas, Managing Director of the Motivation Romania Foundation, in order to learn what hardships people in wheelchairs have to go through, particularly those living in the countryside, sometimes in areas so remote not even doctors can reach them.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation has launched the second edition of the „Fund for Good Deeds” financing programme, amounting to a total value of 350.000 euro.
Our colleague Andreea Moldovan, who works for Vodafone Romania and has volunteered for reading stories to children in the pediatric oncology section of the “Marie Curie” Hospital in Bucharest, answered a few questions for us, detailing her experience among the little ones.
Vodafone Romania Foundation and HOSPICE Casa Speranţei have organised a special summer camp at the beach for 32 children whose existence lie under the threat of an unforgiving diagnosis. This is the fifth year in a row we have organised this camp along with HOSPICE Casa Speranţei, attended by children, parents, medical personnel, social workers and volunteers alike.
For two months, between the 23rd of June and the 25th of August, Vodafone Romania employees become the trusty helpers of the Little People Association volunteers. Part of their activity involves reading stories every day to children in the oncopaediatric ward of the Marie Curie Hospital from Bucharest.
In the first half of June the 12th edition of the Civil Society Gala took place at the Romanian Athenaeum, where the best projects and programmes from the non-profit and non-governmental areas in Romania were applauded and rewarded.
The Hercules Association organised a summer camp between the 23rd and 28th of June in Moeciu de Sus where, with help from the Vodafone Romania Foundation, 40 children got to enjoy being out in nature within a specially designed programme.
The Motivation Foundation and the Vodafone Romania Foundation are launching the Mobility Caravan, a pilot project in Romania, through which people with locomotor disabilities from rural areas in Romania, who don’t have access to specialized services, receive personalized mobility equipment and they benefit from free adjustments and repairs for said equipment. The program also has an instructional component with regard to developing an independent lifestyle and transforming the participants into active members of the community.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation and the Community Support from Bacau have launched the “By the forgotten grandparents’ side”, a project for supporting the elderly with health issues or other difficulties from Bacău. They will benefit from medical aid, homecare, special recovery and social care services.
We participated in an extremely special swimming contest, Motivation-Vodafone, with 27 children and youths with disabilities, at an annual event organised by the Motivation Romania and Vodafone Romania Foundations.
The story of Condelina Kilikidis and how she entered the world of humanitarian actions begins in 1990, right after the Revolution, when she got a job with General Secretariat of the Government, which at the time was developing a new institution: the State Secretariat for Handicapped People. She specifically wanted to work in a central public institution, because she was forbidden to do so by the communists, who wrote her and her family up, on account of being foreigners established in Romania.
Condelina Kilikidis
The institution where Condelina Kilikidis was going to work was founded in an extremely sad context for our country: there were 100.000 institutionalized and abandoned children in Romania, living in orphanages in unimaginably poor conditions.
Every year, approximately 70.000 people are diagnosed with cancer, and over 500 of them are children. More than 60% of children and teens afflicted with cancer are hospitalized in Bucharest in one of the two specialised units: The Prof. Dr. Al. Trestioreanu Oncology Institute and the Fundeni Clinical Institute.
For them, the P.A.V.E.L. Association launched the “Hospital school” project in 2012, which implied resuming studies while in the hospital, with the help of specialized teaching staff. “Hospital school” commenced at the Fundeni Clinical Institute and Bucharest Oncology Institute and it was aimed at children and teens with different forms of cancer, blood diseases or serious anaemias.