In these years - thank to long distance adoption - life of many
children has changed

Our effort goes on just with your help

Housing and vocational training

Romania

At the start of the nineties, in Rumania the tragedy of children abandoned in institutes (over 100,000) and infected by AIDS was discovered. Based on the figures issued by the Ministry of Health in December 2000, 5.629 clear cases of pediatric AIDS have been recorded (excluding HIV infection cases); 3.445 children are still living. These figure show that Rumania has approx. 60% of children with HIV infections on the whole of Europe. The infection developed the most in the years between 1988 and 1991; its transmission has been mainly horizontal (i.e. transfusions with infected blood, improper care): Children affected by the disease are now aged between 10 and 13. Almost half of them live in orphanages or similar institutes. They are therefore children who have been abandoned by their families, who never experienced the warmth of home, the love of parents, brothers and sisters, and who are also faced with the distress of the disease.

AVSI has been active in Rumania since 1994, when it carried out the rehabilitation of the pediatric department of Victor Babes Hospital in Bucharest. The department was (and still is) caring HIV infected children abandoned by their families. Since then AVSI has been developing a number of projects in favor of HIV infected children, in collaboration with various local organizations, operating mainly in two institutes : Victo Babes Hospital and the hospital-orphanage of Vidra.

At the beginning projects were mainly focused on health and training activities, but soon it was realized that what children needed the most were not only better treatments, finer hospitals and orphanages, but their first need was to be loved by somebody.
The need to belong, in a relationship with an adult, is essential to build a balanced personality.
Since then, the main efforts and the biggest investments have been routed in the direction of finding family solutions for children. The areas of search have been many : from tracing the family of origin of the child to check the possibility of a return or at least of resuming the relation with the parents, to the search of alternative families (foster families), and the establishment of welcoming homes structured as families.
In 2000 AVSI built the first family house for HIV infected abandoned children. The house, which is organized as a true family, is located at Chiajna, a village approx. 6 km far from Bucharest, and gives hospitality to 8 children coming from the hospital-orphanage of Vidra. There is a mother, a father and a brother sharing life with the other 8 children.
The house is very nice, in order to give these children, who have not been wanted by anybody, and who lived for years in inadequate and overcrowded institutes, without any significant relation, the possibility to experience beauty. The house is very large, so that each child may have adequate room, and his/her own bed, closet and desk. They go to school, do their homework and play like all other children. Children have their papa and mama as all children should have.
A second family house has been purchased and rehabilitated in the area of Pipera, in Bucharest: it will take in another 5 children. Soon they will also have the possibility to be welcomed by somebody who loves them and who calls them with their name.

Russia

Novosibisk is a large city of the Russian Federation, located in the middle of the Siberian region; it is one of the most important industrial poles and still remains one of the few scientific and cultural centers.
In recent years, economic and political instability of the whole Federation caused a serious social crisis, worsened by failure of the welfare policy. In Novosibirsk the percentage of low income, unemployable people has been increasing year after year and now, over 256.000 persons out of a 1.485.000 inhabitants, need to be supported by social services. This adds to the crisis of families with consequent increased number of abandoned or neglected children. Many women and children live in a particularly difficult situation, many are unmarried girls with a baby, unable to grow their child. Unmarried girls with children represent a category which is not recognized: only very few of them are registered at the police headquarters and receive an allowance to care for their own baby, while the actual percentage of mothers needing to be supported is much higher. Moreover dormitories for homeless people are not allowed to take in women with babies. The missing answer to this need leads many women to have an abortion even after the legally allowed period, or to abandon the newborn at the hospital. It must be noted that in Russia hundreds of thousands children are abandoned in orphanages. These are mainly state-owned institutes, while religious or lay institutions, which only in recent years started proposing other forms of hospitality, are very few, also due to inadequate laws and to excessive bureaucratization of the Russian Federation.
AVSI has been active in the area of Novosibirsk since 1995, starting with health and training projects. In 1998 it started supporting a welcoming home, taking in girls with babies and run by Caritas. Such support has been consolidating in the run of time and in 2001 AVSI has set up a new welcoming home for girls with babies. Here 5 girls live with their babies: the ten guests are first of all helped in their primary needs: house and food. True welcome is however that of giving the mother the possibility to live with her own baby, without being compelled to abandon him/her by the difficult circumstances she is experiencing; at the same time we give the child the possibility to grow with his/her mother in a significant relationship able to accompany his/her development up to the discovery of his/her identity. Hospitality is temporary, until the baby is one year old; then the girl is supported in the search of a job and of a house, where she can live independently with her own baby. However mother and child are not abandoned in the subsequent years, but the support continues both in respect of some primary needs, and mainly to continue the educational relationship with the operators who welcomed them.
While this social structure does not meet the entire need of the Siberian Region, it certainly represents an innovative example of social action: a real social alternative able to enhance the positive experience of the mother-child relationship.

Paraguay

In recent years, the attention of the public opinion in Paraguay has been drawn on the issue of children and street children. In particular it has been acknowledged how the situation of these minors worsens when the already difficult living conditions add to law violation, with the consequent punishment. Once he gets free, the minor experiencing in jail subhuman conditions, often has no alternative other than returning on the street and resuming the same style of life that previously led him to delinquency, thus originating a vicious circle.

In 1994 the volunteers of the "Centro de Solaridad San Roque Gonzales" started visiting weekly the minors of the only juvenile reformatory of Asunciōn, called "Panchito Lopez". The initiative, which is still going on, was aimed at offering the minors - through dialogue, cultural, training and recreational activities - moments of sharing, where their dignity of human beings is enhanced, even in the dramatic experience of jail.

The positive results of this charitable effort, led to the idea of offering this youth a real alternative to street life, once they are leaving the reformatory.
The project of social reintegration for the adolescents of the Asunciįn juvenile reformatory was thus started. It is focused on a "welcoming home", a place where minors may stay and grow in an environment stimulating their complete education as persons and fostering the redemption of their dignity, in view of their full social reintegration.
The "Casa dos menores Virgen de Caacupé" is located at Itauguā, 35 km far from Asunciōn, and has been built with the contribution of AVSI and of the Spanish Cooperation. It is a unique structure of this kind on the whole territory of Paraguay and has a maximum capacity of 24 minors. At present it has 16 guests.
Admittance is allowed to minors aged between 13 and 19, living in poverty, who did not commit extremely serious crimes. They should have regained their freedom or be on probation and should decide to enter the house spontaneously. Stay in the house is free, there are no guards and doors are always open.
Here, under the guide of educational operators and other qualified staff, minors have the possibility to experience an orderly way of living together in a community, through education to the respect of themselves, of their own basic freedoms as well as of other people's, and to regain the sense of their own dignity and responsibility.
Moreover, adolescents may complete their school education and follow vocational training courses for an effective reintegration into society, also through a dignified job. A special session of primary school has been opened in the house, with the support of the local Ministry of Education. Adolescents may thus attend the school in the morning and complete the compulsory cycle by attending adult's alphabetization courses. Moreover, those who want to continue their studies, have the possibility to attend superior school at the Technical National Institute of Itauguā, collaborating with the house through an agreement for the evening classes.
Using the natural resources of the property - land, lagoon and wood - a technical training has been started in the areas of vegetable and flower growing, bee-keeping, bird-rearing and fish-breeding. Theoretical and practical training courses have been implemented by engineers and agronomists made available by the Ministry of Agriculture. Each of the young people, based on his own skills and choices, has attended actively to some of these activities, acquiring the theoretical and practical skills required to find a job, at the end of the program.
Finally, the House always fosters the approach of the adolescents to their original families, in order to check the possibility of a reintegration when this is considered as positive.
Local institutions consider the House as an excellent place as to effectiveness and achievement of the targets proposed. Thus more and more frequently the Court is soliciting direct entry to the House as an alternative to jail.
In one year of activity, 16 adolescents entered the House and enthusiastically joined the educational path. One of them has already completed the program with secondary education and has been reintegrated into the original family.
The tailor made educational method, peculiar of the House, leads adolescents to a radical change of position towards themselves (increased self-esteem and certainty of their human talents) and the outside environment (increased opening and positive consideration of reality).

Vocational Training

Kenya - St Kizito Vocational Training Institute

The St. Kizito Vocational Training Institute, located in the suburbs of Nairobi, has been set up by AVSI and the Dioceses of Nairobi with the financial support of the Italian Cooperation, and is run by AVSI. The Institute offers vocational training courses, normally of two years duration. Examinations are made by governmental or international institutions. When it was started, in 1993, it offered three vocational training courses and 63 were the students attending lessons. In 2001, it offers 8 courses (car mechanics and car electricians, electricians, electronic engineering, joiners, tailors, plumbers and metal working, secretarial work and computerized data processing) to some 400 students. As a whole, over 1300 students attended the school up to the year 2000. The school staff is composed of 29 people, out of which 21 teachers. 95% of students pass their examinations, which is a really significant percentage. The basic point of the work is the educational proposal to the young person as introduction to reality. This generates an attention to the all the needs of the youth attending the school and particularly to the educational need, implying that the vocational training offered has a high quality.
The answer to the educational need lays in the common work of teachers, that enhancing the consciousness of their educational function, enables to offer to the students a friendship exceeding the borders of the school life. Thus the school becomes an environment where young people experience the positive aspects of reality and may recover confidence and hope for themselves.
Such position led the school to experience a real opening toward the social reality, in particular the business world, to which the school proposes the possibility of a common work, in order to make training really effective from the point of view of the requirements of the job market. Many managers and businessmen have entered a consolidated relationship with the school : for instance Pirelli, Toyota, and General Motors are available for training teachers, offer apprenticeship opportunities to the students, and equipment for the laboratories).

A partnership has also been entered among AVSI, the St. Kizito VTI and the not for profit association COWA (Companionship of Works Association) to help youth enter the job market. The collaboration provides help to unemployed or underemployed former students and to the youth of the Nairobi suburbs looking for job opportunities and starting small entrepreneurial activities. This activity is implemented through two specific services : the first one fosters communication between the young person looking for a job and the company, meeting the basic requirements of people (how to prepare a CV, how to face an interview, how to identify companies eventually interested to hire people, etc.) and offering the companies a point of reference able to prepare the candidate and to make a first selection . This is particularly important for companies looking for reliable staff. Over 400 people called on this service in 2001. The second one fosters a realistic and responsible approach to the opportunity of starting an entrepreneurial activity, through training and consulting services. A program has been identified to accompany the young people in the different steps of an entrepreneurial activity (from the idea, to the feasibility study, start up, etc.), enhancing the personal responsibility and supplying the proper professional tools.
The basic point of these two activities is also educational. An help to enhance the value of oneself and to take consciousness of reality and the proposal of a place alternative to solitude, also and particularly from the professional point of view. Some 110 people have attended the training courses since March 2001, promoting the start-up of 23 micro-businesses, also through limited loans to make the start-up of the activity possible.

THE VOCATIONAL TRAINING

AVSI is directly involved in the support and in the daily running of two vocational training schools of Kampala. The two schools are private and managed by the local NGO COWA (Companionship Of Works Association) that is part to the AVSI networks. The private vocational training sector is the only one partially effective in Uganda, because the government has not enough resources to cover all the country with proper infrastructures. Recently a big international project for the upgrading of the vocational training in Uganda, with international donors and the approval of the government, has targeted 20 private institutions all over Uganda and among them there are the two schools of COWA.

COWA VOCATIONAL TRAINING CENTRE.

The Centre is located in the suburb of Kampala, in an area of recent industrialization, and is offering courses of carpentry, metal work and masonry (in the near future courses of electrical installation and computer practice are to be started). The school has enrolled at the moment 37 students and has so far graduated 101 boys, 90% of them have managed to be permanently settled in a working situation. Born in 1995 the school started as a consequence of another activity: some AVSI volunteers started to be present in the juvenile prison of Kampala (with an annual turnover of about 500 young people) where the children were detained for problem more related to the poverty and the abandonment of the family than criminality. Because a lot of them were showing a desire to change and restart a new life, this centre was created as an experience of training on the job around some expert artisans. Even now the majority of the students are coming from the juvenile prison of Kampala, were the social workers of COWA continue a daily educative presence. Linked to the vocational centre there are also the "welcoming houses" for the students that are without a home or are abandoned by the family (often the link with the family restarts after years, when the boys get qualified and enter into employment). The school has grown in all aspects: it is not any more an experience of training on the job but a real vocational training institution to whom the minister of Education has requested a collaboration for the preparation of the curriculum for similar vocational schools of the Uganda government. The centre has developed a collaboration with some successful Uganda companies where the students are sent for stages of field training and from where the school get a judgment on the degree of preparation achieved by the students in order to improve continuosly the curriculum and methodology of the centre.

CENTENARY VOCATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL.

This school has been started by an Irish missionary in 1992 in order to take care of the girls who were orphaned because of AIDS and that he was meeting in Kampala. The most important need was to welcome and give courage again to whom, having lost both the parents, had been abandoned by the relatives, stigmatised by the society because they were victims of AIDS and treated as a slave in somebody else's house. This experience had a fast growth and later trusted by the founder to COWA. Now the school, attended by 77 girls all-coming from very difficult urban and social situations, offers training in tailoring, catering and craft activities.

SOME CRITERIA OF METHOD FOR THE TWO SCHOOLS:

1) Particular care for education that is not only instruction:
· Some meaningful adults have been asked to meet the students on a regular basis;
· Politicians and various personalities have been invited to give visibility to the school and also to make the students aware that their effort is a beautiful adventure and has a lot of dignity;

2) AVSI has striven a lot with the management of the schools to try making solid the institutions even from an administrative and managerial point of view. One of the objectives is to make the school successfully even as a business venture. For this reason we are working on a twofold scenario: on one side we are looking for international support (especially distant support for every child in the school), on the other side every school has created a production section in order to generate profit to support the global non profit activity.

BRAZIL School of Agriculture "Rainha dos Apostolos" - Manaus, Brazil

The inhabitants of the Amazonian region have been living for centuries of the products offered by the forest, while today they are recording a remarkable decrease. It is therefore necessary to learn how to cultivate the forest, respecting it, and at the same time to increase productivity. However, it is not possible to leave the digging out stage and enter the production phase, failing the technical and cultural tools necessary to make a qualitative leap in the approach to environment.
The school of agriculture "Rainha dos Apolostolos", located at 30 km from Manaus, in the heart of the Amazonian forest, is an attempt to meet this requirement. Every year the school welcomes some 300 "indios", sons of small agricultural producers of the internal regions, to offer them a human and vocational training. Teaching includes production and breeding techniques and methods that may be reproduced in the places of origin, to contribute to the improvement of the living conditions of the local communities and at the same time to safeguard and maintain the Amazonian ecosystem, today seriously threatened. The school represents a unique reality of this kind : in the Amazonian region there are very few public or private institutes training technicians for the agricultural world, but all of them are more oriented toward work in large farming activities, rather than in the small internal realities which represent the majority.

The school has been established in 1974 by the missionary fathers of PIME and since 1990 is run by a social not for profit cooperative called "Sao José", which has been established by local people. AVSI has been collaborating with the school also since 1990, through the presence of its volunteers, technicians and trainers, and with modernization and development projects funded, among others, by the Italian Cooperation and by the European Union.

The school offers a complete educational path, from pre-school up to the technical high-school certificate, which is recognized by the government authority. However, due to its specific aims, efforts are focused on the last five years of school, which are attended in internship. Since "indios" are very poor, they pay only a symbolic entrance fee. School provides for food and stationary and, in some cases even for clothing.
The school's educational approach is to safeguard and enhance the local culture, without any attempt to replace it with western values and ways of life. In fact many teachers are of local origin - generally they have been former students of the school. The school's educational proposal enables different tribal identities to leave together in peace and fosters the establishment of unity and collaboration links, extremely useful for the development of the person and of the populations living in the internal Amazonian regions.

The school includes a farm with a surface of 200 ha, most of them covered by tropical forest. Only 50 ha have been used for cultivation.
The main purpose of the farm is to enable students to experience in practice what they are learning in the classroom, during the five years' internship.
Theoretical lessons alternate to practical agricultural training work in the areas of animal breeding, agronomy and agriculture. Here they acquire the grafting techniques; they learn how to cultivate not for an intensive exploitation, but to improve the land; they are taught techniques for the selection and genetic improvement of the breeds and the preservation of some products.
In the farm they breed cattle, pigs, goats, rabbits, stock ducks and bees. Some dying out species of fishes and turtles are reared, in order to restock the surrounding forest. Cultivation cover the typical products of the tropical forest: maracujā (passion fruit), orange, papaya, lemon, mango, coconut, pupunha. In addition to the production of vegetables and legumes, a gardening activity has been started for the production of ornamental plants. Students also learn the techniques to transform the typical fruits of the region, such as the mandioca, getting flour and other derivatives for the production of liquors, jams and sweets, as well as the various processes for the production of cheese.

In second instance, the aim of the farm is to support the school through its products, thus reducing the need to purchase outside the food for students. In fact, direct production covers 80% of the school needs.

During these years the school has become a very significant point of reference for local populations and the whole Amazonian region. Most of the students trained there are now working in their communities of origin, acting as a driving force and promoting agriculture, while many small agricultural producers find in the school an effective testing and spreading pole for advanced techniques. This leads to an improved standard of living of local village communities and contributes to protect the whole Amazonian ecosystem.

TUNISIA THE PRELATURE SCHOOLS
 

The schools founded and managed by the Catholic Church in Tunisia benefit from a long and respected tradition: the oldest foundations go back to mid-19th century and the youngest to the to the mid-20th century. After the country proclaimed its independence in 1956 the Church was allowed to continue on with its educational work directed towards Tunisian youth, through self-financed nursery, primary and professional schools. Prelature schools, whose teaching programs have been adapted to national directives, totally respect Tunisian cultural tradition and at the same time promote universal human values. They have nearly 5,400 students from all social classes; most of the staff (more than 400 women and men) are locally-recruited. Schools are greatly esteemed by local people, because of the quality of teaching and care given to education.
Never the less, the socio-economics evolution of the country demand Prelature to reconsider the educational system and the organisation of its schools. A renewal of structures and equipment, in line with present standards, is needed; in addition, environment contributes to the educational process. The staff training is equally necessary, to maintain standards in a changing environment.
The AVSI project, inserted in EC-approved Block Grant, concerns the whole staff of the primary schools: head-teachers, teachers, auxiliary, administrative and ancillary staff (in fact, all adults in school, though having different functions and tasks, form the educative community and have a responsibility to the children). The purpose is to increase professional competence et educational unity in schools, to develop the exchange of experiences and collaboration among different schools, to promote contacts with other educational organisations. The aim is for head-teachers (all expatriates from varying backgrounds) to acquire up to-date knowledge of Tunisian school and society, and to learn about pedagogical and didactic methodologies, thereby ensuring a global quality service. For teachers, the object is to develop a personal attention and approach, as well as methodologies and techniques to better understand, support and form children (including children with problems). Auxiliary and administrative staff will enhance their computing and professional skills, while ancillary staff will develop an increased awareness of health and safety.
Specific and multidisciplinary training session are foreseen.
Hitherto, the following activities have been realized: a head-teachers training-session in Morocco, to learn from the experience of the ECAM (Enseignement Catholique au Maroc) schools, where a common educational project has been shaped and Documentation Centre Library, based on project pedagogy, successfully introduced in the recent years; a computer training-session for auxiliary staff.
Both activities have attracted much interest.