Each year, the Cosmopolitan Club organizes a Thanksgiving Benefit Dinner the proceeds of which are donated to a worthy project in need of assistance. Early this semester, Ana-Maria Popa and Manjula Samarasinghe suggested that this year's dinner proceeds be used for a scholarship program in Romania near Ana's home town. The Cosmopolitan Club Board of Directors thought this was a worthwhile cause. Over the last ten years, Romania has been experiencing a dire economic situation because of the transition from a centralized to a free market economy. In this condition, with an average monthly wage of about $100 nationally, many families are unable to provide their children with a high school education. This situation is more severe in the rural areas, where many families live below the poverty level, and children with exceptional abilities do not have the chance to continue their studies.
To address this problem, Monitorul de Iasi, a newspaper from Iasi, a city in Northwestern Romania, has launched a campaign to help provide financial assistance. The project it called "Scholarships for Gifted Children from Rural Areas" and is cosponsored by the local County Education Department. This year, forty students were selected based on ability and creativity tests. A mother whose girl was selected this year said that the project was the only chance for her daughter to attend high school. As in many other countries, education is the only way to get out of poverty and help the country develop. The scholarship of $500 covers the cost of living and school expenses for one year. We will be able to help three children, as we have raised $1500 from our Thanksgiving Benefit dinner.
The following is an excerpt from an article in the Monitorul de Iasi.
Vasile Pirtac, whose first worry when the school principal announced that his daughter Oana would study in Iasi was to find enough money to buy her new school clothes. "So that she doesn't look like she's from the country," he says. He remembers when a young man from their village who was admitted to a high school from Iasi a few years back complained to him that his classmates called him "The Peasant." He doesn't want the same to happen to his daughter.
Oana, a blond, blue-eyed girl, dreams of being a physician. This may be due to her father being ill. The girl was raised by her father and her grandparents in the home of the latter. Oana's family does not have an income. Vasile Pirtac would not have been able to save up the sum close to the $500 scholarship that Oana and her classmates at Eminescu High are benefiting from if he sold the entire harvest gathered this fall from the plot of land behind their house. "This scholarship was a gift from God," says the village elementary school teacher, Valeria Dumitru. The chosen students and their parents have to struggle even to come up with the money for new clothes and other small necessities before their children's departure for Iasi.
The villagers, most of whom are dirt poor, cannot send their children to school in Iasi. "Cursed village," says Valeria Dumitru. "Grozesti is situated in a calamity-prone area, where heavy rains and hot summers both bring trouble, winter floods or drought," she explains. The village sits on the bank of the Prut River. The 400 inhabitants can see Basarabia (Ukraine) at the horizon and on TV screens the only stations available are from Chisinau (Republic of Moldova) and Moscow, besides the national Romanian station.
Our celebration of the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving is a time which calls us all together, regardless of religion, race, nationality, or culture, to give thanks for our many, many blessings: There is no greater expression of our sincerity than that of sharing with our less fortunate fellow human beings throughout the world, thus making a priceless contribution to the well-being of present and future generations.
From many individual efforts there has come forth a wonderful gift to ourselves; we are able to help at least a few more children achieve a fulfilling future. All the while we affirm strongly and clearly that above all nations is the spirit of fellowship. All who give are doubly blessed for the opportunity to share and for hopefully inspiring the same spirit of giving in these young Romanian children. Thus will all contribute to the ideal sense of humanity.
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Claudia
Rodrigues and Caroline Wagner at the Brazilian dinner
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