‘Community Action’ is a concept introduced by the Children’s High Level Group, an organization founded by Emma Harriet Nicholson – Baroness of Winterbourne – and J.K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter sequel of novels.

In Romania, “Community Action” is being implemented through a national program called the National Strategy for Community Action (SNAC), initiated and coordinated by the Ministry of Education and Scientific Research, in partnership with Children’s High Level Group. The program includes various volunteer activities performed by high school students in the benefit of vulnerable children and adults in the community.

Meant for children and young people interested in the implementation of SNAC in schools / communities, the guide “Be a volunteer for your community” is an open publication, developed by the Association for the Development of Social and Educational Services Catharsis (promoter Project) in partnership with Terre des hommes – Romania, Children’s High Level Group and the Romanian Foundation for Education and Educators.

If you’re part of those children / young people who want to make a change in the world around them and were looking for a tool to help you put your ideas into practice, this Guide is for you! Read it, keep what suits you, find yourself a team and “Be a volunteer for your community!” (Catalina Chendea, Introduction Guide).

“Be a Volunteer for your community!” guide was developed under a project funded by the EEA Grants 2009-2014, through NGO Fund programme in Romania, Component 1. Involvement, Sub-component 1.2. Volunteering. The publication does not necessarily represent the official position of the EEA Grants 2009-2014.

Terre des hommes (Tdh) has been awarded “Level 1 certification” for safeguarding children following an assessment by the global child safeguarding movement, Keeping Children Safe.

“By working to keep child safe in all aspects of their work, Terre des hommes shows real leadership in the aid sector on child safeguarding. We hope all organisations follow their success in implementing the International Child Safeguarding Standards. We must ensure that all children everywhere are protected from harm,“ says Sarah Blakemore, Director, Keeping Children Safe.

Level 1 certification evaluates if the child safeguarding framework of the organisation clearly outlines where there are risks to children’s safety and identifies the steps that need to be taken to minimise those risks.

Keeping Children Safe found that Tdh’s child safeguarding work was strong in several areas:

• A truly global child protection policy has been written and is available in different languages as well as materials for parents and children. There are procedures and guidance across the whole organisation. The policy is regularly reviewed and continually strengthened.
• Tdh has developed a good set of training materials and always inducts new staff on child safeguarding.
• Monitoring and review of child safeguarding takes place regularly, with active learning sessions.

“I am delighted Terre des hommes has gained Level 1 certification from Keeping Children Safe. This certification recognized the work of all our teams on the ground. The credit really goes to them,“ says Caroline Monin, Risk Management Advisor at Tdh.

About:

The Tdh’ Child Safeguarding Policy reaffirms and strengthens our commitment as an organisation towards keeping children safe and protecting them from all forms of harm and abuse. This is an issue of critical importance for Terre des hommes and we see that the protection of children, the promotion of their wellbeing and upholding children’s rights as the foundation of our work.

Keeping Children Safe is a dynamic and growing global network working to keep the world’s most vulnerable children safe from abuse and exploitation. It works in over 120 countries and reaches out to over 134 million children annually.

Since April 2016, 21 social referees in the Danube Valley have changed their way of working. When arriving at their offices, in the Public Services for Social Assistance, the referees have turned on their tablets instead of PCs and, with the World Wide Web at their hand, they opened new windows towards the best practices in social work.

Offered by the Foundation Terre des Hommes through REGAL project, the tablets help the 21 social  referees to prepare and report their field visits much faster, to exchange information with General Directions for Child Protection without delay, to support Community Avisory Boards in establishing meetings as well as to monitor legislative changes and emerging opportunities in their field of interest. At the same time, being just one email away from each other, the 21 social referees can innovate in their everyday practice, by sharing experiences and synchronising their work.

In addition to this, tablets users can access anywhere and anytime Tdh’s ressourses for the professionalization of child protection services. For example, social referees can participate in case discussions and webinars organized on ChildHub, the online platform for child protection in Eastern Europe; they can report human trafficking by using the mobile app “Stop trafficking children!”; they can participate in the zefiR project implementation, helping to improve Roma people’s access to education and health; finally, they can visit archive.tdh.ro to learn about new funding&development opportunities offered by the foundation.

Thus, we can expect social referents from South West Oltenia to grow into a professional community that will deliver quick and effective response to those in need of assistance. Their success story is just at its beginning, but we trust that they will use the tablets to tell us the sequel and we wish them a lot of success in operating on it.

From June till December 2016, Terre des hommes will develop the first version of a socio-educational methodology that can be used by „Second Chance” educators for a better integration of children on the move***.
The methodology will be a main output of ROBIN, a transnational project funded by the European Commission through Erasmus+ programme, KA2. To learn more about this project, click  here.
For a proper and relevant substantiation of this future methology, we call all teachers involved in the Second Chance programme to fill in the following needs analysis questionnaire.
Respondents’ input will help us design a training course on how to apply inclusive learning methodologies, which will then be delivered to a total of 100 educators from each country involved in the project.
The survey takes about 10-15 minutes and can be done online – click here for a direct link. Answers can be submitted by the deadline May 21, 2016 and will be confidential.
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*** By “children on the move” Terre des hommes refers to children and young people with no fixed abode, whose parents are working abroad, who are repatriated, refugees or trafficked, traveling voluntarily or involuntarily, accompanied or alone, within the borders of the same country or within the EU,  etc.

In real life, being a child in court could risk to be „game over”. At some point, the child didn’t knew how to make use of his/her rights and obligations, thereby becoming a suspect, a witness, a criminal or a victim.

A consortia of 6 partners – Terre des hommes Lausanne Hungary (The Applicant) , National Network for Children Bulgaria, Brave Phone Croatia, Terre des hommes Italy, Terre des hommes Romania and Victim Support U. K. – wants to turn this situation around by helping children and youngsters become aware of  theirs rights and obligations and enable them to use this know-how for their own protection.

This is the reason why „Right(s) Court for Children” came to life, a project funded by the EC (JUST/2015/Action Grants) which will produce a simulation game, staged and designed by children and experts, where game players learn to master their rights&obligations as tools to escape riskfull situations.

At 6 months after its official start, the „Right(s) Court for Children” project is already assembling „experience-designers” in Romania.

To this end, the first National Advisory Group (NAG) was set up, involving experts from the Police- Institute of Research and Prevention of Criminality, General Direction of Child Protection, FONPC (Federation of Child Protection Nongovernamental Organizations) and Association Justice for Romania. On March 9th, the NAG members met up and brainstormed on the possible outcomes of the project, visualising what could be reached through the online game. Due to their input, it was established that the simulation game should be developped on different levels of difficulty, making it accessible for many youth found in difficult situations. At the next meetings, NAG will be enlarged with experts from other state institutions as well, interested in bringing their added value on the project.

Also in March, the Romanian project team organized consultation meetings with teenagers from the Technological High School „Dimitri Gusti” (Bucharest), School „George Calinescu” Nr. 148 (Bucharest) and the National College „Mihai Eminescu” (Constanta). The consultations with teenagers as well as the preliminary results of Knowledge and Attitude Survey applied to 52 pupils showed among others, that youngsters would be most interested in case studies and they need to understand better the legal aspects of penal procedures. In addition to this, by working in teams, youngsters were able to generate various game scenarios that are mostly connected to work exploitation, online bullying, domestic violence and other forms of abuse upon children. In all cases imagined by them, children were victims or witnesses. Also, youngsters recommeded that the different scenarios should describe possible „game developments” generated by one decision or another – ”That’s the best way to learn out of it!”.

In the coming few months, the youth consultation groups are ready to go „to the next level”: visits to the court, police or other juridical offices, for whom they have already prepared their questions. Personally, the only issue that I have faced so have a peek at this hyperlink far is that it didn’t seem to want to show a list of unread mails through the mail app. We’ll keep you posted on their findings and on the way „Right(s) Court for Children” is being developed. You can also follow the story on:.

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Project funded by the European Comission through JUST / 2015 / Action Grants.

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