Our hub for youth and children aims to open its doors even wider in 2025.
Our Resilience & Innovation Facility is a safe, inclusive space where vulnerable children and young people gain digital and emotional skills and prepare for the future.
Concept: Access to technology and resources is not enough to provide long-term confidence, so we designed a program for them that included life skills (critical and creative thinking, collaboration) and psychological support, as well as opportunities to socialize and connect with other young people.
Essential to our support model is to ensure that young people are not just passive recipients of help, but participate in it and gain confidence that they can change their future for themselves and their peers. So far, the project has contributed to solving several essential issues for young people (migrants/refugees in particular): education, integration/inclusion, community development, improving technical and life skills, sustainability.
HISTORY
In 2022, the Terre des hommes Foundation initially created a safe and friendly space in Bucharest (then Brașov) for Ukrainian children who had fled the war. It was intended as a place to make friends, learn digital skills and a place to remind themselves to play, gaining confidence in their future.
It was called the Resilience and Innovation Facility and over 600 children and adolescents have passed through it, participating in workshops on 3D printing, wood carving, video animation, storytelling, painting, pastry and first aid. Here is the story of our initial center dedicated to refugee children here in this VIDEO
The technical equipment includes Original 3D Printers Prusa i3 MK3S+ Prusa i3 MK3S+, Portable 3D Scanner Revopoint POP Advanced Kit/Einstar, Wacom Intuos S Graphics Tablets, Roland VersaStudio GS2-24 Vinyl Plotter, CO2 Laser Plotter 40W MAX 40x40cm + Air Assist + Red Point, Secabo TC7 LITE Heat Press, Brother Innov-is F440 Embroidery Machine, Epson L810 Sublimation Printer, Arduino Kits
Photos that tell the whole history of the center to the present can be found on the Instagram Innovation_ Hub
What we did in 2024-2025 among other things
- We organized stop motion animation workshops, coordinated by trainers from Animest (International Animation Festival)
- We organized the launch of bilingual Romanian textbooks specially created for children and young people in Ukraine
- We officially launched "In the footsteps of our fears", a book published bilingually, in Romanian and Ukrainian (photo here). The stories were written and illustrated by Ukrainian children and adolescents, in 2024, in a storytelling workshop during which they created characters, dialogues, narrative arcs and suspenseful scenes. The 10 authors and illustrators are all Ukrainian children and young people. You can read the book online and listen to the stories, in both languages, herehttps://shorturl.at/J9trd
- A conversation club in English was launched, as an initiative belonging to one of the young beneficiaries.
Media features
https://www.europafm.ro/joaca-si-tehnologie-pentru-educatia-si-integrarea-copiilor-ucraineni/
Radio România Internațional -2022 https://www.rri.ro/en
OUR GOAL
In 2025, we want to keep the doors open in this center for Romanian and refugee children. We will work with children at risk of school dropout, children in context of migration (regardless of nationality); children who benefit from a form of international protection; children in the protection system; Roma children; children with parents working abroad.
In our experience, it takes at least a year for young people who start a program to truly learn and practice technical, social skills or see real psychological effects.
What can you do?
We need each and everyone`s support, if possible, as follows:
As a company
Individually
We draft sponsorships contracts or you can send any amount to our account
FUNDATIA TERRE DES HOMMES - AIDE A L`ENFANCE DANS LE MONDE, UniCredit Bank. Nr. cont bancar RO81 BACX 0000 0010 2791 3000
Why do we need support?
For 30 years we have relied on institutional funders (EEA and Norway Grants, European Union) but the current context forces us to diversify our funding sources. Also, the needs of children and young people in Romania are more complex and more difficult to cover in the long term.
So far, the mentioned space and project have been supported with the help of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the Representation in Romania and the Rapid Response Fund program of the State Secretariat for Migration (Switzerland), but these fundings have ended in April 2025.
