Funds Sources: Education Campaign

Project Name: Generation Centers

Link: Facebook Fundraiser

Community Partner: The Margareta of Romania Royal Foundation (Website)

Starting Date: September 2021

Financing: PENDING

Project Status: In Development

Total Project Budget: $11,000 (incl. non-RUF sources)

RUF Proposed Financing:$11,000

Financed Amount: $3,746

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Short Description

The Generation Centers project is a program that aims to offer various educational and professional activities after school. The focus is on children from 20 disadvantaged communities, and the project is implemented by senior volunteers.

Project Details

The Generation Centers offers various educational and vocational activities after-school to disadvantaged children from 20 communities, implemented by senior volunteers. Depending on personal and professional experience, the elderly volunteers organize individual training, clubs, and practical workshops, thus supporting the children's school progress, as well as their vocational or personal development. Some of the activities will be online, others outdoor or in small groups within the center, as required by the sanitary context. The Generations Centers provide intergenerational education by implementing a large portfolio of activities, before school or after school, into support of disadvantaged children of the community.

These could be as tutoring, clubs, workshops, classes offered by seniors, and take place within the social centers, outdoor or online. Based on our previous 6 years of experience with 32 intergenerational centers, the activities offered are from these categories (depending on the volunteers who joined).

• Support for school
• Educational clubs or classes around school subjects
• Vocational clubs
• Creative and crafts workshops
• Sports activities
• Personal development classes
• Board games or other strategy or imagination games
  

The entire process to provide this kind of educational support through Generations Centers are:

•  Selection of after-school day centers with children beneficiaries from disadvantaged backgrounds, aged between 6-16 years, enrolled in a form of education.
• Signing funding contracts with selected NGOs to implement intergenerational educational activities.
• Training of the centers’ staff on project objectives and implementation of the intergenerational methodology.
• The school and socio-emotional evaluation of the children, in the beginning, and at the end of the project in order to follow their evolution.
• Launching campaigns for the recruitment of qualified senior volunteers for the personal and educational development of children and the actual selection of senior volunteers in each of the partner centers.
• Planning the educational, vocational, or personal development activities held by senior volunteers, the calendar and budget needed for implementation
• Implementing intergenerational activities and finding the optimal ways to carry out in pandemic conditions (online, outdoor, in small groups). Assistance and monitoring of organizations during the project.
• Equipping the centers with the necessary technology to continue the education remotely, if needed during the pandemic crisis, but also of the children who did not have such resources provided by the family or the school.
• Promoting the good practices identified at the Generation Centers on public channels, online and offline.
• Evaluation of project results using qualitative and quantitative indicators

The direct involvement of the elderly in the education of the children coming from disadvantaged families results in improved school performance, their quick integration into the staff of each after-school social center, and improved interpersonal relationships at the level of each child or family supported in this way.

Another important effect of intergeneration projects is changing the collective paradigm on aging and elderly people. Active aging through volunteering prove to the community the value of our seniors and shows a way they can contribute to the common better.

Budget

To be available soon.