Read me so I can learn how to read! - literacy program for children from disadvantaged social environments

A great number of people in Romania live in remote areas where ICT is not well known or used, and many are illiterate or digitally illiterate. The project targets 50 children from disadvantaged social categories, mostly Roma, many of whom were not attending school or did not know how to read, at the Northern Branch of the Medgidia Municipal Library.

Promote education through visual art and reading for 50 disadvantaged children (15 Sept 2014 - 15 June 2015); reduce the number of unschooled children; promote equality of educational opportunity; raise digital and internet skills; and improve life quality, integration, self-esteem and independence through non-formal education.

Twice a week, two-hour sessions run with volunteers from a Community Center: children use computers, read stories and poems, watch films made from the stories, retell stories and recite. A monthly contest has children write a text on computer and read it aloud; winners receive story books, funded partly by a 1,000-book / 7,500 RON grant ('Books 4 Youth') from the foundation 'Mereu Aproape'. Stakeholders: librarians and 11 volunteers.

Children reportedly developed cognitively, learned to read fluently, tell stories, use computers and tablets, and socialize, with positive spillover to their families and communities; no quantified before/after evaluation figures are given.