By Lauren Fishbach | US Board President, Co-Founder Delia's Center
Dear Friends,
We are grateful for the care and support you have given to our children at Delia's Center for Special Needs Kids. We have seen so much wonderful progress and a promise of more to come! For sure, your assistance has made a true impact on the lives of the kids.
Advocacy and advancements for children with special needs is slow in progress here and it is especially difficult to get attention and support for kids who do not have parents and are in the foster care system. The laws here can be frustrating and without any "muscle" to make meaningful change. One of the things our kids grapple with every day is that while the law says all children must go to school, there are no special education teachers. One of our Romanian board members is the Vice Principal of a local high school and she says the teachers are frustrated too as they have no training, no support and yet have children in the classroom that they don't know how to teach. It is understood that material needs to be adapted to accomodate the needs of different children but the average teacher, with no training, doesn't know how to do that. What we see in response, are children in classrooms who are virtually ignored by their teachers and classmates. We have kids who are now attending middle school and high school who cannot do basic math and read at an early elementary school level but are in classrooms with children who are at grade level. Or they are in kindergarten but cannot process what is going on around them due to intellectual disabilities or having autism. They feel defeated in the classroom and ashamed.
All of the above underscores the need for Delia's Center and more and more we are having children traveling from rural villages nearly an hour away to receive our services. Thank you for making it possible for our kids to be educated according to their needs in 1:1 and small groups. I am excited for my next trip to Barlad at the end of March and trying hard not to be envious of our CEO Laura Larkin who is on her way to Romania at this very moment!
We look forward to sharing more updates with you soon!
Best,
Lauren
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