Romania

Hello everyone,

my name is Rebecca and myself, Jean and Jess are soon to be newly qualified Speech and Language Therapists who graduate in June. We have all been accepted to do some voluntary work this summer with a charity called SHARE, which is sending newly qualified Speech Therapists and Occupational Therapists to Sibiu, Romania, where they will be working in orphanages with children between the ages of 5-18 who have learning disabilities for one month in June/July 2014.  

Many of the children have been abandoned due to their disability and many have a learning disability due to lack of stimulation and interaction opportunities. Jess, Jean and I will be working alongside the staff in the orphanges spending time with the children in providing positive ways for them to learn to interact, play and express themselves. Communication is a basic human right and one that should be accessible to all. Those who have been deprived of early interaction and play miss out on the foundations which later help them become functional communicators - this project's aim is to provide support and stategies to the staff to help these children to continue to learn relevant skills for communication long after we have returned to the UK.  

As this project is  based in a very economically deprived country, we have been asked to gather resources to take with us as the orphanages have none. We plan to gather lots of resources such as; toys, colouring pencils, paper, jigsaw puzzles, balls, games etc. Resources such as these are fundamental to the work we will be doing, and help make the therapy with the children as fun, interactive and worthwhile as possible. We have been asked to provide all resources as part of the project - the charity is able to fund our flights to Romania but everything else such as; accommodation, food, resources are being funded by ourselves; as we are currently students who are about to graduate we currently have no paid work. Therefore we would be very grateful for any donation (no matter how small) to assist us in providing as many resources as possible for the children. All the resources we take to the orphanges will remain there for the children once we have finished. Any money remaining from this fundraiser after resources have been bought will go directly to the charity www.share.org.uk.

 Many thanks for taking the time to read this and thank you in advance for any help you can provide,

Rebecca, Jess and Jean.