Te Aud Romania: Breaking Cycles of Disadvantage For Youth Through Sport & Education

April 6, 2023 

In celebration of today’s International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSDP), we are honored to introduce our inaugural Sport Together Fund delivered by Beyond Sport beneficiaries. With an initial focus on promoting “Leadership Together,” the seven recipients are providing sports-based leadership training opportunities for refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable communities that promote well-being and inclusivity.
 

Te Aud Romania (‘I Hear You Romania’) was founded in 2014 to help orphans and disadvantaged children in Romania thrive. In the country, one in five families lives in poverty and 10,000 children are abandoned each year due to poverty and lack of education. To address this, the NGO works to improve basic education and provides marginalized youth aged 6 to 21 with practical and effective methods to deal with their trauma, gain valuable life skills and access employment and personal development. It also runs sport and social inclusion programs to help strengthen community ties and enrich the lives of kids.

The organization’s efforts are largely focused on Suceava county in northeastern Romania – one of the poorest and most underserved counties in the country. As it borders the west of Ukraine, the area has seen a huge influx of Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers. In 2022, upwards of 1.6 million Ukrainians entered Romania at the start of the war. It currently hosts over 83,000 refugees, 33% of which are children. Recent data shows that around 5,000 refugees are based in Suceava alone. At the start of the war, Te Aud Romania helped support refugees in transit, but now there are entire communities living in the border area.

The organization is using its Sport Together Fund (STF) grant to deliver a Social Impact Leadership Workshop for its sports staff and volunteers. The workshop will equip them with sports-based methodologies and techniques to support young refugees and asylum-seekers and promote integration with the local Romanian community. The course began on March 1 and will run through May 31 comprised of three modules of at least six eight-hour sessions.

Inclusion through sport 

With a mission to break the cycle of disadvantage for children, Te Aud Romania has developed informal educational programs and social development sport projects to address issues such as school abandonment and absenteeism, social inclusion and inequality. Rugby, which was introduced into the country in 1913, is the most popular sport in Suceava county. The charity therefore leveraged the sport to create “Rugby for All,” a program delivered in partnership with DHL Express Romania and BCR for the last six years. It is integrated into the school system and most of the teachers are former players, including some from the national team. The program includes boys and girls aged 6 to 14, many of whom didn’t know what rugby was previously. 

The program has provided a wonderful avenue for refugee youth to engage with other marginalized youth from the surrounding rural towns. Efforts are focused on remote villages where there are limited sport opportunities and Te Aud Romania often organize transport to reach kids who would otherwise trek 10-15km to the city. In 2022, Te Aud Romania supported 36,843 children and teenagers, close to 12,800 of which were Ukrainian. Rugby for All is a safe space for the kids who communicate with each other through google translate on their phones and the common language of play and sport. “It’s easier to play with a ball to integrate and communicate than speak,” said Oana Vasiliu, Communication Specialist. 

Te Aud Romania is also using a portion of the STF grant to conduct workshops for 30 local coaches and volunteers focused on supporting young people experiencing PTSD, putting sport for social impact into practice and how to best communicate sports opportunities to attract refugee communities to attend.

“We work with school children, but also with professional athletes who need to continue to improve and attain greater heights. The workshop provided us with in-depth knowledge and expertise in teen psychology to better understand these kids. Moreover, we found new techniques in terms of motivation and endorsement that can be utilized for our high-performance athletes and identified tools on how to create the appropriate environment for them to thrive. As teachers and coaches, we need to continue to increase our self-awareness so that we can put the athletes we work with in the best position to succeed and furthermore motivate mass sport participation,” said Andrei Varvaroi, rugby coach and manager of a local school sports club. 

Beyond Sport launched the Sport Together Fund in 2022 to provide grants and capacity-building support to non-profit organizations, sports clubs and collectives who are assisting communities facing conflict, displacement, human rights violations and climate change disasters through sport. The Fund also supports the transit and host communities where people are rebuilding their lives. 

Learn more about all our Sport Together Fund Grantee Partners HERE.