Fundatia JOYO - The JOYO Foundation

Many of the children grew up in ghettos and they’re still living there. Others come from tiny, overpopulated apartments, in blocks in which the names of those with rates arrears, hang on in the entrance halls. The traumas and deprivations many of them suffered since early childhood, are hard to imagine. They come to us extremely confused, for they never had any role-models in their families, nor the chance of developing value judgments. Their parents are, often, completely resigned under the triple burden of lacking the most elementary subsistence means, jobs and, finally, hope.

We also sustain these parents, next to their underprivileged children. Still, the children remain in the focus of our attention. During the day, before or after the school hours, they come to the “Florian House”. We are preoccupied not just by their school training, but also by the development of their communication and relationship abilities, which cannot take place without overcoming the affective obstacles linked to the traumas and the chronic neglect they endured.

At the “Florian House”, these children learn to play, to amuse and friendly discuss to each other. Step by step, they come to trust the others and their own possibilities, which made many of them achieve amazing emotional and cognitive progresses.

Out of isolation

In a small rented apartment, with two unheated rooms and with no warm water, located in a miserable Bucharest suburbia, two sisters from a rroma family of five lead a life full of hardships.

Poverty, the meanness of some class colleagues and the helplessness of their family, drove the girls to drop out from school. Expecting a matrimonial arrangement – sustained by a rroma tradition even in children’s cases – they remained at home with their housewife mother and were forced to endure almost daily the aggressiveness, most often accompanied by violence, of their alcoholic father. Unfortunately, the mother couldn’t conceive a separation from him, for his wage was the only revenue of the family.

In this situation, the sisters didn’t have any perspective of continuing school and their social contacts were almost non-existent. When we met them, they seemed almost frightened. We intervened after long negotiations with the whole family and we managed to involve both of them in the “School is Cool 2” project. After the young girls got back to school, we also began to support their mother, a poor traumatized women, with an immense need of social and psychological support. In a short time, she completely changed her self-image and, with our help, she obtained a job that offers her a minimal financial independence.

Instead, it wasn’t easy at all for the girls to adapt again to school’s requirements, but we permanently encouraged and sustained them, until they managed to successfully finish the eight grade. Afterwards, the most ambitious of them decided to continue her studies in high-school. The other one preferred to enroll in a qualification course which was sponsored by our foundation and now she works in the native city of her mother, where her family lives.

Look how, with the aid of our foundation, three souls who seemed until a few years ago doomed to a life of misery and despair, finally came out to light and are now able to look trustfully into the future.

An oasis of peace and understanding

Searching for a center which two of the three children of her could attend after the school courses, Mrs. P. knocked at our door, at school’s recommendation. Visibly marked by her worries, she presented us her and her children's dramatic situation.

The husband, pensioned for medical reasons (heart disease, hypertension, organic personality syndrome) is the source generating the emotional instability within the family. Mother and children suffer psychic trauma, living in an atmosphere which generates big frustrations. Alcohol consumption, overlapped with the personality disorder, leads to father’s aggressive attacks, directed against the children and their mother. As a result, Mrs. P had to work just two hours a day, dedicating the rest of the time to watching over her children. We included the two school children in the “School is Cool 1” project, supporting her in order to work and cope with family’s needs, without worrying for the children’s welfare during the day.

Due to the fact that they are affected by the parents’ fighting, the two children often display emotiveness, sadness, impulsive, uncontrolled reactions and are predisposed to depression. However, they found at the “Florian House”, an oasis of peace, understanding, affective support, efficient assistance and an educative environment that encourage good school performances.

A ray of hope

On a dusty street from a poor region of Bucharest, entering through a ramshackle door in a yard in which you can discover, in a house of two rooms and a hall transformed in kitchen, eight souls: the parents and their six children.

M. is one of these. His look is darkened and, at his 14 years, his eyes have seen many, for the street was his life environment, where he ran from the poverty from home. The unhappiness can be read on his face, which is seldom illuminated. The hardships of his family are also, his own. Each day they can be evacuated by the owners who claimed the building… and then, only the sky will be their roof.

Including him in the « School is Cool 2 », with just a few days before his birthday, was to him a wonderful gift. Each day of him in the “Florian House” Day Center, means to him a “new portion” of knowledge, education and friendship.

Support for a too young mother

Abandoned by her mother in the second year of life, A. was raised by the paternal grandparents without ever knowing the mother’s love. A too severe grandmother didn’t manage to substitute her and hurried girl’s option for a free of constraints street life. Thus, she spent most of her childhood in dubious neighborhood children gangs, and at 14 of age, while being in the seventh grade, she completely dropped-out from school. Then followed two years of “freedom” in which she made haste to know life under all its aspects. In the end, A. discovered that she is pregnant and that nothing of what she knew until then and no one of those around her could help her cope with this situation.

We encountered the teenager in the last months of pregnancy and convinced her to raise her child and also go back to school. It was very clear that she wouldn’t manage to get on with these, without a real support, so we helped her with the necessary things for child raising and caring, we counseled and sustained her in order to adapt to school’s requirements. After graduating from school she decided for a waiter qualification course. The foundation sustained her in obtaining this qualification and then, in seeking for a proper job. Our young mother would have soon become discouraged, if we wouldn’t have been there for her in the months of job seeking, following the course’s graduation. Then, when she was less expecting it, came the good news. She was hired at a restaurant from a big Bucharest garden.

In the day of her first salary, A. visited the ”Florian House” to share with us her great joy of being now able to ensure her child a decent life. Without having the model of a parent who accomplished the same, she built her own way in life, because at the JOYO Foundation, she had the chance of meeting some people that trust in her and didn’t hesitate to help her.

A way towards dignity

E. is an rrhoma boy who has another three brothers. He forgot what he has done at school before abandoning it, but he remembered the children laughing about him because he was poorly dressed and his parents couldn’t help him with homework.

The six members of the family live in the basement of a block, with no natural illumination, without windows, among crossing pipes that are a permanent danger for them. When the pipes break down, the space is inundated and the beds become useless, so the family sleeps straight on the floor, until finding another beds.

The parents work irregularly, performing only unqualified jobs, the incomes are very small and unstable, assuring only the food for the family. They don’t have money to rent an adequate space in an apartment.

The older 2 children of the family interrupted the school 3 years ago. Through the SIC 2 program, we managed to reintegrate them into school. They didn’t know to write and to read. Theirs capacities weren’t solicited and stimulated over the time, so they progressed with difficulty, with a lot of effort. Their desire to find out and know always had to be stimulated. Both of the brothers have a long way to cover until obtaining a school instruction that will offer them the possibility to choose for a professional qualification.

More like a home to them

C. is 13 years old and has 7 more brothers. He lives with all the family: mother, step father, the sick grandmother and his brothers, in a room which has to be soon evacuated. This unwholesome space is in a building without electricity, sewage and gas. Because of the material issues, often C. leaves home to earn his existence alone, through markets. He comes back in the family after such escapades, when his urge for freedom diminishes. He has 3 brothers who attend school and also, join him, in the SIC 2 program of the Day Center.

The mother remarried and, a short time ago, gave birth to the eight member of the family. The situation became harder since they all are in danger of living on the streets, when the building will be demolished. As the father is the only provider for the family, they cannot afford to rent a house. On the other hand, they are not able to solve the situation of their identity papers so this makes it impossible to them to obtain a social house either.

The family needs a substantial support to rent a space for living, so that the word “home” would really mean something for these poor children.  Their participation to the SIC 2 program is also endangered, because for the family the priority is to get a house and not to handle the issue of children’s education. Still, the children could feel more at home in the “Florian House, than in any place they lived in.

Children and mother in school

S. was abandoned by her mother at age 3 and was raised by her father and paternal grandparents. The grandparents encouraged her to learn, but her father, violent and alcoholic, stopped her from going to school in the third grade. The child had to stay at home, in order to support, with her weak forces, the rural household works.

Because of her wretched life, she left home at only 14 and got married with her elderly friend. Soon, she gave birth to two children and lived with them for a few years with her husband, who, unfortunately, also became a victim of alcoholism. Exposed to his physical and verbal abuses, the women and her children had to live in a state of permanent terror. Happily, S. managed to snatch away from him and headed towards capital, seeking help for her and the children to the same mother who abandoned her in her childhood.

Thus, these poor three come to live in one of mother’s apartment, while S. tried hard to find a job for herself. Naturally, she could only get some unqualified jobs, which couldn’t assure her  sufficient revenue to carry for her children and pay her contribution to the house expenses – a motive for countless disagreements with her sisters living in the same apartment.

We were very impressed by the sad story of this family, that was recommended to us by the manager of S. little girl’s kindergarten. We searched immediately for the mother and included her children in our projects. Short time after this, S. asked us to help her too, by allowing her participation in our school reintegration project, so at the end of the school, she might obtain a qualification and offer her children a better life.

For the two children and their young mother, suffering not only because of the poverty, but also because of countless trauma of the past, the possibility of benefiting during many more years of psychological, pedagogic and material support, meant a true u-turn in their destinies. With tears in her eyes, S. confessed us that nobody helped her so much, in her entire life, as our foundation.

A better home

M. is eleven years old and comes to the day centre since his first school year. This intelligent little boy, with a great affective need, involving enthusiastically in all the activities of our centre, hides a deep drama that still affects him. His mother and the two older brothers have a mental retard and his relations with the last ones are very difficult and full of tension, because of incessant misunderstandings. The woman has no professional qualification and tries to manage on her one, with temporary jobs, that hardly ensure the survival of her family. The greatest part of the expenses goes to the children’s needs but the arrears and electricity debts are always in the agenda. Although they live in full Bucharest, they have neither current water, nor sewerage and the miserable house which almost falls on them can be lost in any moment, for the owner is decided to drive them out of there.

To M., the “Florian House” Day Centre is like a second home, in which, fortunately, he is able to enjoy decent living conditions. To him, not only the quality food he receives here, but also the opportunity of a shower, is an extraordinary thing. He has many friends here and enjoys with them the support of our pedagogues and psychologists in all the issues concerning school, but also their personal development. Thus, he discovered that he is a child of many talents, who writes short stories full of imagination, is passionate by biology, sings and draws beautifully.

Due to frustrations and lack of intellectual stimulation from the family, in the first years of school, the boy manifested a great tendency of negligence, that could have drive him to school failure, but the fact that he learned and prepared his homework under the guidance of our foundation’s pedagogues, kept him far from this risk.

Although he continues to suffer because of the problems from his family environment, M. is today an optimistic child, fully trusting in himself. His greatest dream is to become a lawyer and defend for free the poor people who don’t have anything, not even a place to live in.

The boy who didn’t know what a story is

A very cute child, but looking and behaving at his eight years of age like one of five… this is our little T. Having a libertine and emotionally instable mother, who broke up with his biological father, the child was raised alternatively in three houses – that of the grandparents from the mother's side ,that of the grandmother’s sister and that of his stepfather. However, in all places, he was confronted with the violence, aggressiveness and lack of education of people in charge to raise him. His solution was to get stuck in himself at the smallest sign of conflict and refuse any communication.

This autistic type bias, together with his numerous school absences in the first grade (due to the fact that no one of the family members didn’t get some time to join him on the way to school), would surely have lead him to school failure and drop-out, in case he wouldn’t have come to our day centre.

Here, he found everything he lacked in his family – care, affection, pedagogic guidance, education, quality food – and he realized this since his first day here, which ended with tears. Many times afterwards, the daily separation from the foundation and the friends there meant a very unhappy moment for this poor boy. However, our work with him is not an easy one, for he still remains a mirror of the abuses and trauma suffered in his few years of life. Only with a lot of tact, patience and affection can such a child be helped to progress step-by-step and this is exactly what happened to T. in the last year.

If, in the beginning, nothing seemed to interest him much, in this period he came to love puppets theatre and stories and discovered that even the homework that seemed so extremely painful before, can be interesting, and, quite often, pleasant.

A way of their own

A. and I. are 2 brothers who are 16 years old. Their father died after divorcing the boys’ mother.

After father’s decease, they remained in the family’s apartment, but their mother lost it, because she had to pay very big debts accumulated in time (for the satisfaction of her personal pleasures).

They then lived at many addresses, in very difficult conditions, tolerated by different persons and friends. The mother still didn’t have the possibility to pay the rent and other obligations. Because of the hardships, both children dropped-out from school.

Two years later, A. and I. were reintegrated in school, with the support of the Foundation and managed to continue studying.

For now, they live in the house of some very old friends of the family, in one room. In exchange, the boys help the family’s small company, by guarding a storehouse. The mother sometimes leaves the boys, for she is concerned to find men who are fond of transitory relations.

The two boys began to understand the utility of graduating from school, as this is the only thing that would give them the possibility to help themselves in the future.