Use your skills to provide young adults who grew up in orphanages skills to attain better-paying jobs
Volunteer In Romania
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Use your skills to provide young adults who grew up in orphanages skills to attain better-paying jobs
Background
In 2017 and 2018, we partnered with Hope and Homes for Children in Baia Mare to provide training and mentorship to young adults who have experienced life in the institutionalized orphanage system and youth who currently live in small family homes. During this time, HHC Romania reported that because they were upscaling their activities to include several counties across Romania, their direct work with children and young adults had been impacted, compelling them to rely more on their partners from state authorities for activities involving children and young adults. Fortunately, our partnership provided a solution to this impact and provided HHC Romania staff with the opportunity to re engage with the roots of their work and the source of their passion – working directly with children and young adults and helping them reach their full potential by offering their support and being more present in their lives and daily activities.
Based on our past experiences with successful projects implemented alongside Hope and Homes Romania, we learned that the skills the youth benefited from learning the most included English and general computing. Over the course of three weeks and with three volunteer teams, we successfully taught English and computer lessons to the youth and young adults– an initiative that was informed by these previous findings. We also paired Romanian youth with our volunteers to practice conversational English for 6 months following the trip. As a result of our project, Hope and Homes Romania reported that local young people felt more empowered to give back to the community, to pay more attention to the needs of the underprivileged, to be more assertive and be actively involved in changing lives, while improving their skills in English and computer science. They also highlighted that youth were given the opportunity to be both “trainers” and “trainees” at the same time– being on the giving end of support and assistance to the children and young adults included in the program (especially through translation) and on the receiving end of informal training on how to organize certain activities, how to properly relay instructions and even learning themselves about new skills introduced by V2I.
Due to the success of our previous projects and the positive relationship that we have created with our partner, Hope and Homes (HHC) Romania, we are hoping to facilitate another in-person volunteer opportunity in July of 2023. However, because of the significant gap between our last visit in 2019, created as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, we understand that volunteers will be working alongside an entirely different cohort of youth and that we will need to restore interest in our project with the new group. On a positive note, we will be facilitating an opportunity for an entirely new group of youth to learn English and computer skills, similar to their predecessors.
We are offering TWO volunteer program dates for the Romania volunteer program. You can choose the time that works best for you.
June 23 – July 2nd ♦ June 30 – July 9
Each date option will include 6 volunteer days with travel to and from Romania taking place over the weekend.
Community Building & Essential Skills
Be part of heightening the sense of community among young adults through team-building activities, playing games, and soft skills training.
Teach English & Computer Skills
Support youth and young adults in learning English and computer skills. These skills will enable them to attain better paying work either in Romania or in the rest of Europe.
Workforce Development
Use your skills to support young adults in building their resumes and improve their interviewing skills. Our young adults are aspiring for better paying work, and they need your help to develop their employment skills!
Simply put, EVERYTHING!
Absolutely! We encourage family/group volunteering. We consistently have volunteers who come with their spouses, partner or children. The ideal minimum age to volunteer and contribute to a V2I program is +14. If you plan to volunteer with your family, we can make special arrangements to make sure you’re comfortable while you’re still a part of the bigger team!
Yes! We are verified with Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Netflix, Apple, Telus, Google and with any organization that uses Benevity. If you’re a Salesforce employee or if your company uses Benevity, we can walk you through the steps to gain donation matching and volunteer grants towards your involvement in our volunteer program.
Yes, when you commit to joining a volunteer opportunity, Venture 2 Impact will give you access to your own fundraising page on http://donate.venture2impact.org. Through our website, you can raise funds, donate towards the project and track your donations.
Our model is grounded in connecting your skills with need that exists in communities that can’t access those skills or can’t afford to pay for them. As an educated and skilled professional, we believe that you should use your energy and volunteering time to share those skills and create a resilient community … rather than the alternative, which is usually going abroad to do something that’s not related to your skills at all (building a structure, painting something, etc).