By Lauren Fishbach | U.S. Board President
Dear Friends,
Earlier this month, our CEO Laura Larkin and myself made our usual fall trip to visit our special kids and amazing team at Delia's Learning Center in Barlad. We generally visit every 5-6 months and each time we are awed by the progress the kids are making and how far we have come. We now have 41 children with ages ranging from 3 to 16-years old! Not only does our team work so hard with the children, they provide guidance and support to families/foster families raising special needs children with few resources in the most impoverished area of Romania. I am excited to share with you some of the highlights of our visit and a new program we launched.
First-ever Field Trip!
With funding from generous supporters, we took kids on their first-ever field trips! Younger kids we took to the Barlad zoo, where they were especially amazing by the fish in the aquarium. It was beautiful to witness their wonder and excitement at being together and viewing animals for the first time.
On a Saturday, we hired a mini-bus and took kids, along with two of the foster parents as extra chaperones, and went to Galats for the day - about an hour and half away. We went to a large zoo, botanical gardens and then a stroll alongside the Danube while treating the kids to ice cream cones. It was truly a day they will remember. It seems hard to believe but we have children who are 15 years-old and have never been to a zoo and seen live animals. One little girl told me that the Danube was the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life! I am attaching some photos from the day.
Expanding our Life Skills Program to Encompass Safety - General Safety and Safe Bodies!
This was something that was very important to myself and Laura. Especially with our kids becoming pre-teens and teens, we realized that the kids needed to learn basic things such as when is it ok to the cross the street at the green light and importantly have an understanding of appropriate and inappropriate touching. While crossing the street seems something we should not have to teach, one of our foster moms told us that she was very upset that her pre-teen daughter no longer wanted to hold her hand to cross and this was triggering lots of worries as to whether she would be able to care for her as she becomes a teenager. We knew this meant that she was considering when she would be "giving up" or returning the child to the state and, of course, we want to do everything in our power to prevent that!
As always we are grateful for your support and we hope you will continue to donate to this project to help the children. For an inside peak into our work and more photos of the children, please follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram: The_Delia_Foundation
Facebook link is attached below!
Thank you!
Lauren Fishbach
U.S. Board President/ Co-Founder, Delia's Learning Center
Links:
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