Bold dreams come true in the greenhouse Adina Home

Adina Home will be developed into a greenhouse and a meeting place in the local community. We will nurture children and young people with bold dreams, faith in their own skills and a future in Romania.

TEXT AND PHOTO: MAGNE REIGSTAD

In the pig-ridden areas we work, there is a need for a meeting place where children, teenagers, parents and grandparents can meet. Everyone should feel welcome in the yellow house with the red roof.

- The Balder Foundation has believed in the project and our visions, and provided the necessary funds so that good forces in Norway and Romania can realize the plans, says chairman of the board of Fundatia Adina Foundation, Ove Haugsdal. He believes that Adina Home in itself is a solid example of how dreams can come true.

The foundation is now taking root in Simnicu de Sus, which is less than a mile outside the regional capital Craiova. We get closer to the villages where the children and families live. In the house, the Foundation's employees get along well with armbands and good facilities for innovation around our role in the local community. We are welcomed by a host municipality led by modern elected officials and bureaucrats who have seen that Adina leaves its mark on the local community.

We do not compete with the city's culture house, but dance groups become part of the activities. Folklore and dance build identity and even out differences among children with very different backgrounds. Folk dance develops community between the age groups, and in Adina Home there will be enough space to unfold at all levels for everyone who wants to.

The house will have its own quiet room where we will give young people an introduction to the use of PCs for useful things such as writing applications, collecting material for school assignments and learning to use a library of books in both Romanian and English. And we get plenty of space for RoboMech, which teases the participants in both interaction and programming of self-built robots. We already have groups participating in national competitions in Bucharest. Garne's school has made a huge effort with equipment and transferred knowledge that forms a solid foundation for further investment.

We are gaining recognition for the way we run Home Start in our villages. Now we get better opportunities to follow up and educate our adult volunteers, and the women get as a pure bonus experience to put on a possible CV and a useful network.

The city's top is working to modernize the municipality's water and sewer network, and they are upgrading the roads to the villages. Simnicu de Sus develops into a suburb of the big city. It provides a basis for better communication, which makes it easier for children and adults to get to and from the activities in Adina Home.