International

For the past 11 years, JAGS girls have worked in a unique residential Community Action project in Romania. Working in partnership with Christ’s Hospital School and, for the past 3 years, with the Children’s High Level Group (www.chlg.org) an international charity supported by J.K. Rowling and Baroness Emma Nicholson, JAGS girls have applied and been selected for a very demanding project for which they must research, plan carefully and fundraise for several months before the summer.

Most important to the plan, and what has made it a ground-breaking project throughout Romania and much of eastern Europe, is the involvement of local sixth formers, recruited by our partners in Romania from leading academic schools, to join the team and work with the JAGS girls to lead the sessions and take responsibility for the children. The emphasis is very much on local self-sustainability, so that the project continues after we leave, and the local students are encouraged and supported to continue the contact with the children. The success of these projects over the years has led the Romanian government to create a National Strategy for Community Action, which gives all young people the opportunity to volunteer through their schools for this kind of work, and now involves 90,000 young people in Romania. JAGS girls are therefore at the forefront of change in leading by example, and encouraging their peers in Romania to take part throughout the year, as well as in changing educational policy and philosophy at the highest government levels, not only in Romania, but now in Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, where the CHLG is also working: as one student said , “I feel like I am part of hugely important scheme which more people should be involved in”.

The projects, which are run in partnership with Christ's Hospital school, always involve equal numbers of Romanian Sixth Form volunteers, who are essential, both in providing the language link with the children, and in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the project; after we leave, the Romanian volunteers undertake to continue visiting and organising events for the children. The partnerships established over the previous two projects between English and Romanian teachers, volunteers, care workers, psychologists, school administrations and local and national authorities meant that this year we could be even more ambitious in our aims for the children who took part in the project, and in our expectations of the student volunteers who were the key to its success.

Each year we try to break new ground, but there is no doubt that this year’s project has been very challenging and ambitious. The integration of three very different groups of children, and the numbers of children and volunteers, posed huge logistical challenges for the schools and other local institutions, as well as for the volunteers and the activities they planned with the children. The volunteers, both English and Romanian, were quick to realise the nature of these challenges. Their responses, both in adapting their lesson planning and teaching and in their spontaneous and growing sensitivity to the needs and moods of individual children, ensured that not only the individual sessions but the project itself became a success. The daily, even hourly contacts between children and volunteers, who lived in such close proximity to each other, helped to develop their understanding of one another, and enabled the volunteers to help the children to test the limits of their own abilities, and to achieve more than they had thought possible. The community base has been an undoubted strength, and the welcome and appreciation we have received from the people and local institutions in Gurghiu has been very important for the success of the project and the morale of the volunteers. Our local, regional and national support has once again been superb, and this mixture of local, national and international input, which has always been central to the summer projects, was reflected more than ever before in the children and volunteers at Gurghiu, who came together for two weeks of intense work, creativity and fun which helped them all to discover as much about themselves as about others. Integration of all these elements was at the heart of the project, and showed, perhaps more clearly than before, that all of us need to meet and respond to those who are different from ourselves, and that the benefits of this for all are both immediate and lasting.

The projects have, over the years, been seen as a model of good practice by the Romanian government which now, with the support of the Children's High Level Group (a British charity founded by J K Rowling), has developed a National strategy for Community Action to provide similar opportunities for voluntary work for all Romanian young people.

The project, as always, has been a life-changing experience for all those who participated, and planning starts soon for next year. For more photos of Romania 2010 please click here.

Click here for the official Gurghiu Icasp 2011 report. (This will take a little time to load)