This year, the group was together with Costin, the psychologist of Familia AMURTEL, and our loyal Dada Subuddhyananda – a veteran of these camps. The adventure began with backpacking through the mountains to reach a special lake with an interesting history – it is actually a submerged village that was flooded during Ceaucescu’s reign in order to create a resevoir. Only a church steeple can still be seen above the water’s surface. The boys learned kayaking and also constructed rafts from truck tires and crossed the lake on them. It was a challenging problem solving experience – but as Ionut said “No problem, we can figure it out!”. Meanwhile Stefan and Bogdan swam in the lake, and encouraged the younger ones to learn swimming as well.

They also built catamarans using surfboards, wood planks, string and a piece of canvas.  The next day, the  group put on backpacks and began hiking. They faced a big challenge – a powerful thunderstorm, with torrential rains and strong winds. But they did not give up nor get discouraged, but quickly divided duties. Ionut and Bogdan collected firewood, while Florin and Stefan made a shelter out of a big tarp where the group huddled to stay dry. Andrei and Daniel brought water and Ionut Zaharia helped build the fire. It was an unforgettable experience.

The third day, the group hiked through the forests of Sovata and through the village. The children were very enthusiastic and reached all of the destinations that the instructor proposed. In the afternoon, they got to go swimming in the salt water “Bear’s Lake”.

The last day was spent in the ropes course – where the group did many difficult exercises, including the infamous trapeze challenge – in which one must climb a 4 meter wooden pole and then jump to a trapeze bar. Stefan and Bogdan were extremely courageous – having performed this feat last year as well. Ionuts overcame his fear and managed in the end to accomplish all of the exercises.

It was wonderful to see how all of the children grew in their sense of responsibility, bravery and teamwork through these experiences.

Photo Album from Sovata Adventure

despachetare calculatoare

Au fost dornici sa invete

The first phase of instruction took place in the month of August in Familia AMURTEL. The younger boys took part in a training with Iulia Halangescu. They were thrilled to get to unpack the new computers. When they began learning some basics, they were very excited. They couldn’t believe that they could do it. It was an opportunity to increase their self esteem and help them to feel equal to the grown ups who “know” how to use a computer. Ionuts, one of our beneficiaries, even proclaimed that he could help us by becoming the secretary, so that Violeta wouldn’t have to do everything alone.

tastarea primelor litere

deschiderea primului document word

The first project, “Ready to Fly” was a project financed by the Local Council of Buzau, with 10 participants ages 10-13. Five of the participants were our smallerchildren from Familia AMURTEL, and the other 5 were selected from our Fountain of Hope after school.  The aim of the project was to help foster life skills needed for independent living, such as communication, cooperation, teamwork, cooking, cleaning, and money management.  The camp lasted 7 days, and was held in the AMURTEL summer vacation house in the countryside of Poieni,  ”Casa Iedera”. A trainer named Loti from “Outward Bound Romania” was involved in setting up a variety of fun, challenging games and problem solving exercises for the kids, as well as our AMURTEL team who set up creative activities, daily exercises, and involving the children in menu planning, cooking, cleaning and shopping throughout the event.

A special highlight was a trip to the nearby city of Buzau. Each child was given a small sum of money to spend as they wished on school supplies, according to a simple budget plan that they made. The children were delighted to choose their own supplies, and very proud of themselves. They also went to a restaurant together and enjoyed the train ride!  For some of the Fountain of Hope children it was the first time they had the opportunity to travel on a train and they had never had the chance to spend money on their own! It was a wonderful enriching experience, and they appreciated it very much.  Here is a link to the photo album from the project: Photos from Ready to Fly

Catamarans and Kayaks in Sovata

In September,  the older young people from Panatau, and their friend Gabi from Domnesti went to the Outward Bound center in Sovata for our annual adventure camp.

This year, we went by mountain bikes through forests and villages to a lake with an interesting history. The lake had originally been a village that was flooded during Ceaucescu’s time in order to create a resevoir.  Only the steeple of the church could still be seen above the water. We learned how to kayak, and then went by kayak to visit the church steeple.

We also constructed catamarans using surfboards, wood, ropes and a tarp. The wind wasn’t very cooperative, blowing in the wrong direction for the first group and disappearing completely for the second group – but both groups came up with creative and functional designs. It took another day of mountain biking to reach the camp, and on the final day we did more challenging exercises in the ropes course – including one particularly difficult one that required climbing to the top of a pole, and then jumping to a trapeze bar. Everyone managed to make it through all of these challenges quite well, having become veteran Outward Bounders!

As many of our young people are over 18, this may have been the last Outward Bound experience for several of them, as they will be busy with jobs and work (we hope!) by next year. Already we were quite proud of several of them who had held summer jobs so that they could help cover part of their expenses. Gabi and Mircea worked in Budapest at a hostel, and Elena and Mircea worked in the Bucharest kindergartens. It was good to see their increasing sense of responsibility. Here is the full photo album from the adventure: Outward Bound 2010 photos

Share on Facebook ]]> http://www.amurtel.ro/news/443/feed/langswitch_lang/en/ 0 http://www.amurtel.ro/news/222 http://www.amurtel.ro/news/222#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:42:07 +0000 admin http://www.amurtel.ro/home/?p=222 Continue reading →]]> An unexpected opportunity to sensibilize the community in Panatau to the work we are doing with our children at Familia AMURTEL arose when a teacher present at the Open Day program of  Fountain of Hope began to criticize one of our children’s difficulties in school. Unfortunately, few people in the community are aware of the effects of early trauma and neglect on the cognitive and behavioral development of children, and tend to be quite judgemental of both them (they are bad)  and us (we are not educating them properly).  So, it was a brief opportunity to offer some background information to them, and to explain that that is why we put emphasis on creative expression, as such children do tend to struggle in school, and each one needs to discover a their gift in order to build their self-confidence. They were then interested to see the video about our children, and it was beautiful to see how the expressions on everyone’s faces softened and transformed, and how they felt proud of them. In fact, it showed how the community really feels the children from Panatau are “one of us”.  If you haven’t seen the video yet – here is the link for the Familia AMURTEL video:

http://vimeo.com/9515893