Global Volunteers' Romanian hosts enable you to assist them with two different, but very important, projects:

• Care for abandoned or disabled infants and toddlers:
  The Tutova Clinic cares for severely underweight babies who arrive shortly after birth to be nurtured back to health. The babies are generally scheduled to stay at the clinic for about a year, or until they can be reunited with their families. Unfortunately, in 25 percent of the cases, the parents never return. Many of the children who end up at a pediactric recovery clinic are there because their parents are among the poorest of the poor.   You can make a significant contribution to the health and development of these children.

As a volunteer, you will be asked to care for and play with these infants and toddlers - feeding, teaching, diapering and giving them the stimulation, love, and nurturing that they need. Because Global Volunteers sends 16 three-week teams of volunteers to Tutova clinic every year, your contribution will be matched over and over again throughout the early years so that they receive nearly constant attention and care.

• Teach conversational English to high school students: The Alexandru Ioan Cuza Industrial High School was originally founded in 1954 as a Vocational School for the Ball Bearings Enterprise of Barlad and used to train skilled workers for three Romanian cities. 

In 1990, the school officially became a high school and was named after the first ruler of the Romanian United Principalities – Alexandru Ioan Cuza.  Today this school teaches more than 2000 students between the ages of fifteen and nineteen years with more than 1200 of the students studying English. With only two formal English teachers on staff, the Alexandru Ioan Cuza Industrial High School of Barlad has invited Global Volunteers to assist them. Working at the school on a full-time basis is only an option on June, July, and August teams.

While the Romanian English teachers provide the students with knowledge of English grammar and literature, your role will be to get the students to actually apply their English to everyday subjects.  Meeting and talking to native speakers is critical for them, as all will have to take a proficiency test at the end of high school, a test that for some will determine their university path. Moreover, most students recognize that it is difficult to find a good job without a strong command of English.  This is an enormous change for a country where talking to a foreigner was a crime before 1989.

Your role as a volunteer will be to build on their current skill set—and on the work of the Global Volunteers who may have preceded you—so that these young people realize the benefits that a command of English accords in a transitional economy such as Romania’s. 

The students have told us that one of the best things the volunteers provide is an opportunity to practice and make mistakes with someone who is not grading them. You will focus on providing the students with conversational practice in everyday subjects and real-life situations. You can spend time talking freely about life and customs in North America and encouraging students to share information about their own lives. The cultural interchange is every bit as important as the language practice.