"For 7 years, Lidl Romania has been supporting the Teach for Romania organization to continue its mission of developing an inclusive, quality educational system in which teachers are adequately trained and supported to meet the needs of all students in Romania, including the over 1 million students from vulnerable schools. Through its activity, the NGO aims to recruit, train, and support new generations of transformational teachers who will help children from vulnerable schools to continue their studies and thus have a real chance at a better future", the company announced.
In addition, the organization develops and tests intervention programs that provide solutions to a number of critical challenges of the public education system - children's low level of skills in numeracy and literacy, their low motivation to learn, the need for professionalization and continuous development of professionals in education, especially of those who choose to teach in vulnerable communities.
As a result of the amount that the retailer donates as a result of the Back To School campaign, the total investment within the partnership currently amounts to approximately RON 10.5 million (€2.1 million), dedicated to the needs of children who have fewer opportunities for education. Thus, over 20,000 children from vulnerable schools managed in the last school year to improve their skills and competencies needed for the future, more precisely 90% of kindergarten children and 92% of those in preparatory class already know how to read, 80% of children from primary school have made significant progress in their practical understanding of mathematics, and 70% of secondary school students are now at a functional literacy level.
"And this year, Lidl Romania continues to support access to inclusive and quality education for all students, regardless of their background, through a campaign carried out in its stores. The investment made by Lidl Romania will support training and mentoring for almost 150 Teach for Romania teachers who are already in the department in this new school year. During the year, they will have more than 400 hours of training and mentoring, teaching resources, and a team of tutors, to be the teachers that more than 25,000 of the children from more than 200 schools in Romania need", states the company.
In parallel, the NGO aims to recruit and select a new generation of over 100 leading Teach for Romania teachers, who will teach in the 2024-2025 school year, but also to support the 280 alumni who have already passed through the two-year program Teach for Romania.
Teach for Romania aims to develop new resources for teachers within the program and to lay the foundations for a viable intervention model in rural public schools, in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Thus, in the next 9 months, Teach for Romania representatives will be involved in the process of revising the skills grid required for primary and secondary school graduates. Based on these, a training and mentoring framework will be outlined, dedicated to teaching staff, in order to understand the identified needs and how they can guide students to develop their respective skills. In the next stage, Teach for Romania aims to develop national and international partnerships with organizations that have expertise in the STEM field, from evaluation or training for teachers to methodical suggestions and tools for working with children. The testing process of this education model will be implemented in the 2024-2025 school year.
Teach for Romania is a non-governmental organization, part of the global network Teach for All, which seeks and prepares valuable people, with or without previous teaching experience, to become teachers in state education, for children from vulnerable backgrounds. In this way, the organization contributes to ensuring quality education, and the teachers trained by Teach for Romania can become agents of change in education in the long term.
