Education

Ian and Sue Paxton lead JARS (Jesus and Relief Supplies), a charity centred around Radauti in North East Romania, just a few miles from the Ukraine border. JARS work closely with the Hannah Foundation, a Romanian charity which works to provide a future for the most impoverished children in the area.

In Romania, each child must pass their 8th grade certificate if they are to have any chance of finding paid employment on leaving school. This examination is so crucial that most families will pay for their child to receive private tutoring to ensure the required pass grade is achieved.

For the poorest families, this is simply not an option. So the cycle of poverty repeats itself - the required exam result is not achieved, so work is hard to find, and another generation is destined to a life of poverty.

The Hannah Foundation studied the statistics and found that almost 100% of the poorest children fail to pass the examination. Convinced that this reflected lack of tutoring rather than lack of ability, a pilot project was set up to provide a tutor for twenty of these children. As a result, nineteen of these children subsequently passed the certificate. The success of the pilot scheme was so dramatic that the local mayor is eager to support their work.

This year Care4Romania hope to fund five tutors to help over eighty of these children to pass the examination, at a cost of £1,600 per tutor. In addition Hannah Foundation hope to refurbish old computers that they can give to disadvantaged children to help them in their studies.