September 27: Pay It Forward! 2 Euro Monthly SMS Donations to Provide Poor Children with Their First Book

OvidiuRo’s 2017-2018 SMS Draw Campaign to Support Early Quality Education and Literacy in Poor Rural Communities

OvidiuRo call all supporters to Pay It Forward – donate 2 Euro / month for the acquisition of books for the poorest children in Romania and contribute to the quality of early education in disadvantaged communities. 

The campaigns aims to explain and promote the benefits of Reading Aloud with young children while at the same time exposing a sad truth and the solution to which anyone can contribute: giving poor preschoolers who have no books at home their First Book. Over 25.000 could benefit from the 2 Euro monthly donations made by sending CARTE via SMS to 8844 (only available to Romania based pre-paid and post-paid subscribers).

Pay It Forward arose from the need to give all children the chance to early cognitive development and literacy. Over 110.000 children aged 3 to 6 are currently living in poverty in Romania, and over 60.000 of them enrolled for support to attend kindergarten last year thanks to Law no. 248/2015  also known as The Fiecare Copil în Grădiniță Law.

Access and daily attendance is only the first step towards these kids getting quality early education. Upon visiting more than 300 rural kindergartens last year, OvidiuRo singled out the lack of any proper infrastructure for language development and literacy în kindergartens as main obstacle. Without proper books there can be no quality early education.

OvidiuRo acts as an Agency for Early Education and mobilizes private and public resources in order to be able to invest in the quality of  preschool education in Romania. Last year we managed to distribute 18,000 books to some of the poorest children, to most of them it was their First Book. This year we aim at giving at least 25,000 books for children to take home and at supporting 1000 preschool teachers facing the challenges of teaching in disadvantaged communities – through trainings and educational materials” Maria Gheorghiu, OvidiuRo Cofounder.

About the campaign

The Public Service Announcement at the heart of the Pay It Forward campaign uses the Fortunately/Unfortunately game to send through both bad and good news when it comes to education in poor areas.  The voice of the PSA belongs to Teacher for a Day actor Florin Piersic Jr. while the illustration is signed by Petridean.