Trip Update: Fay's visit to Romania

I wanted to share with you an update from my recent trip to Romania to visit the children at our Denisa Day Care Centre. I had the privilege of taking a small team to teach sewing skills to the children, to encourage confidence in maths and to give the children a view of themselves as part of a big world-wide Stand by Me family that cares about each other. 

Sewing skills for all
Everyone was encouraged to sew buttons onto felt squares which we made into a Romanian flag. Many of the children were really thoughtful about where they positioned their choice of buttons. Even the very youngest kindergarten class loved this activity and would have made very many squares all afternoon.

Children learned different embroidery stitches to make a bookmark. The older children learned a variety of sewing skills including being taught the basics of operating a sewing machine and how to use the rotary cutter and mat.

The children were so enthusiastic, with a group coming in their own time over the weekend for an extra session. It was fantastic to watch their confidence grow. So many of the children couldn’t drag themselves away – only their bus leaving made them pack things up and go home.

Fun maths activities 
One of our team spent each afternoon working to make maths a lot more fun and accessible. He had learned a considerable amount of maths-based Romanian vocabulary and played activities, puzzles and games with the children. They were so enthusiastic and kept asking him to play more! The teaching staff were delighted with the resources which they can use in the future. It was a particular joy to see the children respond to a man being the person giving them positive input as most teachers are women and many children have absent fathers. It took Simon by surprise to feel the warmth of their response and to appreciate the value of what he did with them.

One Stand by Me family
Each day we had a slide show of the Stand by Me children at one particular project and learnt how to say hello to them in their language. The children learnt about bananas from Colombia and jewels from Myanmar. Then we had a Bible story which led into making a cross related to each country. 

One of our children shared:
"We had some visitors from the UK at the centre who did many wonderful activities with us. For example, we used sewing machines and each of us made a pillowcase. We also did fun maths, made the Romanian flag and sewed many buttons onto it, and listened to lots of stories. Mrs Fay told us about our brothers and sisters from Stand by Me in other countries, which was very interesting. I liked it very much.”  

Fay Garrett

Overseas Development Team