More than 50 children from low-income families participated in the "I have the right to have rights –learning our rights through play" summer camp on 17–21 June. The camp was organized by Ion Creangă Gymnasium in the children’s village, Zârneşti in Cahul.
The idea for the camp came about after teachers realized that many children in the village do not have the opportunity to take part in camps and summer vacations. ‘Every year, on September 1, children tell us what they did on vacation, in what camps and excursions they were, and there is always a category of children from vulnerable families who, apart from housework, do not see anything all summer long. Thus, we decided to organize a camp for children whose families cannot afford it this year,’ says Nadejda Dobândă, the director of the gymnasium. ‘We organized this camp together with 20 volunteers: students from our school, who prepared all year by participating in trainings and studying the Convention on the Rights of the Child.’
The participating children had a special experience, sleeping in tents in a small forest on the territory of the Cotihana monastery. For a few days they lived according to nature, grew strong as a small community, helped and respected on another. In addition to a lot of fun, hiking, team games, and camp songs, the campers benefited from workshops and trainings on children's rights, media education and online safety, health education, etc. provided by specialists and NGOs from Cahul and Chișinău.
The summer camp took place thanks to a "I have the right to have rights" grant awarded to the Ion Creanga Gymnasium, part of the “Sustainable Community Partnerships to Support the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic Minorities in the Republic of Moldova” project implemented by Terre des Hommes Moldova in partnership with the Institute for Rural Initiatives, with the financial support of the European Union.