Education for institutionalized youngsters

Who are we?

We are a group of young people from Germany, Spain, Czech Republic and France doing a one-year volunteering program in a small NGO called Tandem. The NGO is cooperating with a public institution. We as volunteers live inside this institution, sharing our daily lives with the 80 children and youngsters with mental and/or physical disabilities that live here. They have been either abandoned or removed from their families and live locked away from society in a closed institution in Athens, where they face daily violations of their human rights. We do different activities with the kids in Tandem’s activity center inside the institution.

In our daily work we can see that Tandem has a fundamental role for the children and youngsters living here. Through different activities and programs that they are implementing, they offer them social, emotional, affective and educational support.

For more information follow Tandem on Instagram (@tandemngo), on Facebook (Tandem), visit their Website (tandemngo.gr) or write them an E-Mail ([email redacted]).

Why do we need your support?

We have started this campaign to raise funds to help Tandem to continue with their educational support program. As we all know, education is a human right and it promotes individual freedom and contributes to the wider empowerment of children, their well-being and development, ensuring that they are equipped to understand and demand their rights throughout their lives.

Right now we need your support for the lessons provided by Katerina, the teacher who works for the organization. The lessons are paid by donations and the main donor who was supporting them over the past years is not able to continue the support.

That’s why we want to reach our goal of collecting 6000 euros to be able to keep the lessons running for another 12 months and to be able to provide them with all the educational material needed. Together we can do it!

The special teacher and the educational program

Katerina is working for Tandem since September 2020. She is coming to the institution 5 days per week in the afternoons from 14:00 until 20:00. We can see every day, that she is a very committed, caring and loving person, that became an important reference for all of the kids. She supports them not only in the educational field but also in an emotional and affective way.

Katerina gives individual or small group (2 people) lessons to 21 of the children and youngsters that are living here. The children that are participating in the program are between 9 and 23 years old and they have different diagnoses like Autism, Down Syndrome, ADHD, Spasticity and Apert Syndrome. Some of them don´t have a diagnosis from a specialist but they come from traumatic family backgrounds or have learning difficulties.

She developed a personalized educational program, adapted according to their individual needs and way of communication.

The main goals for the children and youngsters of the lessons and educational support are:

These skills empower the children’s and youngsters’ autonomy with the aim of improving their independence and quality of life.

For institutionalized youngsters it’s more than just educational support

Most of the children that she is teaching are going to a public special school in the mornings. Schools often don’t allow such highly individualized classes which means that the youngsters can’t reach their potential and aren´t encouraged to pursue their individual strengths.

Also, growing up and living in an institutional structure adds to the educational difficulties of the children and youngsters. The living setting, 8-17 children in one house, being taken care of by one or two nurses in eight-hour shifts, doesn’t provide additional educational support at home, as most families would provide for their children (e.g. most of them don’t have access to books, to homework-support or support to repeat what they learned at school in their time at home). Some of the youngsters that were not able to read or write have achieved to do so only through the educational support provided in the lessons of Katerina.

Some examples of the impact of the program in the past year

P. (18 years old): Has improved from recognizing and writing single letters to reading and writing single words.

Two other students M. (16) and M. (12) have learned how to read the clock, something that seems very basic yet it takes consistent practice and understanding for the individual capabilities of the students, it adds to the quality of live and level of independence.

Another student S. (19) has spasticity in his hand and has some time difficulties to hold the pen thus his teachers in the public school never encouraged him to write. With Katerina he is practicing not only to hold the pen but also to write various letters and numbers.

P. (22) is one of the youngsters that spend all day in their bed without any kind of stimulation or education. He has Down Syndrome and is not able to talk. With Katerina he is learning to communicate through sign language and practicing his attention skills.

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