When you work with love, you work better
Iulia Bucataru is a teacher in a World Vision partner kindergarten in Dolj county. She has been working there for 6 years. Every day she welcomes children with love and much dedication. Her entire work reveals joy and enthusiasm.
Iulia tells that it is not easy being a teacher, especially in the countryside, but she feels comfortable and if it were to start again she would choose the same job. At present she is a teacher in the village she lives in but she had to commute long distances for many years:
“There were times when I had to walk many kilometers, no matter the season or weather, sometimes through thick snow. I was passing by many villages and because stray dogs seemed to attack me, people came out from their houses and accompanied me, one by one, until I was safe”, Iulia remembers.
Although the kindergarten is in a small building, more than one hundred years old, with a damaged roof and an almost rotten and moist floor, the teacher has always strived to change it into a cosy and pleasant place for children. Together with them, at the beginning of each season, she decorates the kindergarten with figurines.
“We do our best to give a new look to our kindergarten in order to have fun and to spend the time as pleasant as possible”, she says.
She is grateful for the help came from the others. Due to the projects achieved by the school in partnership with World Vision, Romania has received lots of educational materials, many times: story books, coloring books, games, toys, colors, markers, notebooks, corrugated paper, to help children imply themselves in different activities. Also, World Vision’s trustful partners, such as UBISOFT Company, made a new entrance door for the kindergarten, in order to protect children from the cold outside:
“The heat from the fireplace disappeared among the cracks in the door. Sometimes we were cold and children did not feel comfortable”, Iulia says.
The teacher has always tried to offer a pleasant environment for the 20 children who come to the kindergarten, in order to counterbalance the poverty and needs they face at home. The children come from poor families who support themselves only by their children’s allowances or social aid. There are no working places in the village and the inhabitants’ occupations are farming and animal breeding.
Iuliana, 3 years old, is the most talkative and curious in the group. She likes to attend kindergarten and play with her peers. She has a difficult situation at home. She lives together with her younger brother and her parents in a single timber room.
Claudiu is 6 years old and next year he attends the preparatory class. He enjoys working on the special notebooks, he is fond of figures and Maths. Like Iuliana, he lives together with his parents and older sister, Florentina, 7, in a timber house with a single habitable room. Many times, the two brethren share the same clothes and their parents can hardly offer them the necessary items for school: clothes, shoes, writing materials.
Sensitive and shy, Adela lives in a modest house, far from the kindergarten. She has to walk every day on a bad road and many times she arrives tired and frozen.
Adela has great plans for her future. She is going to become a “dotor” (doctor) in order to cure people in her village.
For them and their mates, the teacher is doing her best to organize the most beautiful festivals. On Christmas, these are “fantastic”, as children say. The rehearsals start very early because each child has to learn a role or a poem. In the final, they sing carols, in an exciting atmosphere. Every year, Santa Claus brings them many gifts offered by World Vision’s partner companies (Ubisoft, Kirchhoff and Cummins Generators). Children’s happiness is reflected in their teacher’s joy who smiles every time she sees the little ones happy.
