Blake Support Romanian Orphanage

BLAKE SUPPORT YOUNG ORPHANS IN ROMANIA

Following the launch of our Giving Hope Through Education programme earlier this year, Blake have committed to providing children in disadvantaged situations with the learning materials required to kickstart their education and pave their way to a brighter future…

And we’re proud to share the story of our very first donations to a group of young orphans in Romania!

THE GURA HUMOROLUI ORPHANAGE

Throughout the world, millions of children are suffering lives of poverty, neglect and hardship – something that is largely unrecognised, and so they continue to be denied the necessities of life such as a good education. And through the Blake Foundation, we are seeking to change this, because we believe a good education has the ability to open up a whole new vista of opportunities to those who, without this chance, would have little hope in life.

One such example of these children are the very ones we were privileged to help in Romania, during November.

Romania is an unequal country, where much of the wealth and economic growth is focused in the major cities, leaving high levels of poverty in rural areas. Contacting a local charity named Te Aud Romania (TAR), we were able to identify the Gura Humorolui Orphanage, in the North-East of the country, as an area where the children were in particular need of support.

The orphanage has over 300 children in its care. These children either have no parents or have been abused or abandoned. Despite their amazing efforts to help them, the orphanage was sadly suffering from a lack of funds, and was therefore in a significant shortage of educational supplies. And that’s where we wanted to help!

To enable us to carry out our mission of “Giving Hope Through Education” to these children, the Blake Foundation partnered with a School in a Bag charity based nearby to Blake’s headquarters in Somerset, whose ingenious solution of a SchoolBag contains all the stationery, learning resources and eating utensils a child needs to attend school and learn.

We were happy to sponsor enough SchoolBags for each child.

DISTRIBUTING THE SCHOOLBAGS

And so, on 20^th November, several members of the Blake team travelled into Romania, where we joined the local Te Aud Romania team to visit the orphanage, meet the children and distribute the SchoolBags we had sponsored to each one personally!

Tim Browning, CSR Director at Blake shares his thoughts on this experience:

“Our mission is to support social mobility for children by ensuring they have access to the materials they need to learn and be educated. Being able to hand each bag directly to the children was incredible and ensured that every penny invested in this project would have the impact we envisaged. There are millions of children in the world who will never go to school and this will continue to be denied them, unless we can make a difference.”

RAISING FUNDS FOR THE ORPHANAGE

To provide further help for the struggling orphanage, Blake also set up a greeting card workshop with the children during their visit.

Providing the children with blank greetings cards and colouring equipment, they encouraged them to think about what Romania meant to them personally and what their favourite things were about living there, and then represent this on their card.

The children thoroughly enjoyed this challenge and astounded us with their beautiful designs! Here we share some photos of the children hard at work:

The cards designed by these children are now being sold by the Blake Foundation to raise funds for the orphanage. Every pack of cards sold will help us as we seek to improve the lives of these children.