Learning Log and Reflective Practice

Maggie Gidney, a teacher and tutor with the Open University, wrote a piece on Capturing Your own Learning and Reflections during Your EBI. Maggies suggests that, by using the "CallOuts" function in word, you can create a Cloud page to jot down apparently unconnected thoughts as they occur in whatever events or circumstances, which you can review and analyse later. Learning logs (in the form of a table or narrative) to answer same questions against headings, can bring evidence to the learning you take. Diaries (to-do lists) can help record events and also enter reflection on actions. Mind maps (there is a software called like this) can help in capturing learning, as well as E-portfolios, to save materials on-line. A blog would also capture your thoughts, and you can create a special E-mail account to send reflections of learning as you take them, to review these later.

Such methods can ensure you keep record of your reflection and learning, bringing the evidence you then need at a later time in your professional life.

Euro 15,000 Partnership with Porsche Romania

At the end of this year, HHC/PORSCHE project is in full throttle! The company decided to grant another year of support for the social project of Priest Ioan Ardelean in Hoteni, home to eight children taken from the childcare system, plus the two he has with his wife, Luminita. And the Social Summer Arts Camp in Hoteni is to take place this year as well, due to the support Porsche Romania offered! Thank you, Brent Valmar and Rainer Trischak, for the consolidation of the partnership we are so proud of! Thank you, Anca Ghenescu, the soul of this project!

Cosmote and Their Love Messages

This year, COSMOTE initiated a campaign to support NGOs. The name of the initiative: Love Messages. By their participation, we can carry out a project through which 116 children stay with their families. We covered the rent, the running costs for electricity, water, heating, the food, the clothing, the medicine, or we facilitated the inclusion of children to schools. In this way, 36 families and their children could stay together. Otherwise, the 116 children would have ended up in institutions, with trauma we could hardly understand. For 37 children, our intervention meant avoiding school abandonment. For other 52, it meant the increase of their school performance. 21 of them benefited from access to medical services and to medication, and many more benefited from recuperation services and interventions. We thank Cosmote and Florina Serban for their involvement in this partnerhip!

If We Don"t Do It, Who Would Do It?

La Brașov, Charity Works Romania, împreună cu Fundația Vodafone, au organizat un workshop cu directorii naționali ai câtorva organizații non-guvernamentale: WWF, WorldVision, Federația Filantropia, Hospice Sf. Irina, Confederația Caritas, Motivation, HHC, SOS Satele Copiilor, Community Aid Network. S-a discutat mult despre încrederea pe care o are societatea română în organizațiile non-guvernamentale, fie ele de mediu, de sănătate, sau sociale. Catalin Popa a făcut o analogie bună cu o reclamă la aviație, unde ideea era - dacă nu vă zburăm noi, atunci cine? La fel putem spune despre organizațiile non-guvernamentale: dacă nu ne implicăm noi în rezolvarea efectivă a unor probleme critice de mediu, de sănătate, sau ale societății - atunci cine se implică?

Dacă nu noi, atunci cine?

E ușor să arunci vorbe, e la îndemână să spui ”nu am încredere”. Dar, până una-alta, organizațiile non-guvernamentale din țara asta rezolvă enorm de multe probleme, sau cel puțin se implică, uneori don-quijotesc, în rezolvarea lor, cu încăpățânare și cu ambiție, din nou și din nou. Așa că am decis să ne-adunăm, să punem laolaltă tot ce facem, să vedem, efectiv, cum cuantificăm cantitatea de „bine” pe care-l aducem în țara asta.

Cred că va ieși ceva fantastic. Pentru că ONG-urile chiar lucrează cu oameni reali, cu fapte concrete. M-au impresionat oamenii pe care i-am cunoscut, dar și poveștile lor de succes. Felicitări, Charity Works Romania și Fundația Vodafone, pentru inițiativa de a ne-aduce împreună! Cred că ar fi bine s-o facem mai des!

Romania Becomes a Country without Children

The children we have are not cared for. We discourage couples from having children, by cutting jobs and poverty. We do not have places available in kindergartens. Schools are unfriendly and the curricula as well. The teachers are humiliated by low payment. The school curricula produces robot-children, whose eternal frustration is that they are not able to face the high requirements and whose permanent conviction is that they cannot, they are not able and they are not smart enough. We tolerate a system in which children are from the beginning doomed to failure and the very few who can face it, spend all their time in front of manuals and notebooks, forgetting how it is to be children any more. We consider it normal for children to grow up in institutions, to move from one placement to the other, dynamiting their self confidence, letting them without the affection they so much need.

The birth-rate in Romania is down to half from what it was 20 years ago.

I am by no means a nostalgic of those times. However, we become a country of old people, slowly but safely. And not even the children we have are cared for.