“I have the right to have rights” summer camp for 50 children from vulnerable families

More than 50 children from low-income families from Zârneşti village, Cahul, participated in the summer camp “I have the right to have rights – we learn the rights by playing”, organized between 17 and 21 June by “Ion Creangă” Gymnasium from the village.

“Every year, on September 1, children tell us what they did on vacation, in what camps and excursions they were and there is always a category of children from vulnerable families who, apart from housework, they do not see anything all summer long. Thus, we decided this year to organize a camp for children whose families cannot afford it,” says Nadejda Dobândă, the director of the gymnasium. “We organized this camp together with 20 volunteers, students from our school, who prepared themselves all year, participated in trainings and studied the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

The participant children had a special experience, as the camp was in tent style, in a small forest on Cotihana monastery territory. Thus, they lived for few days following the rules of nature, learning to strengthen a small community, to help and respect each other. In addition to a lot of fun, hiking, team games and camp songs, children benefited from workshops and trainings on children’s rights, media education and online safety, health education, etc. provided by specialists and NGOs from Cahul and Chișinău.

The summer camp took place under the small grant “I have the right to have rights”, realized by “Ion Creanga” Gymnasium from Zârneşti as part of “Sustainable Community Partnerships to Support the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic Minorities in Republic of Moldova” project, implemented by Terre des Hommes Moldova in partnership with the Institute for Rural Initiatives, with the financial support of the European Union.

Eduard Pesendorfer, project manager at the EU Delegation in the Republic of Moldova: eduard.pesendorfer@eeas.europa.eu