Childopoly Summer Camps has the purpose of teaching children how to develop and start to live sustainably, not to discriminate, grow to be changemakers when they grow up through games, workshops and activities focused on permaculture, holistic education and social inclusion.
Through intercultural activities and exchanging skills activities, both children from urban areas and the ones from disadvantaged communities from rural areas will learn to live together in harmony.

Viscri - a remote village in Transylvania region of Romania and surrounding villages

One of the most important problem in the Transylvanian villages is the lack of quality education for children. Even though children from the villages are familiar with growing the land and helping their parents with the animals, the education takes second place for them.
Children from roma communities and low income families don’t really have access to education at the same level as children from urban areas have.
Because of their lack of quality education, they are bullied by children from urban areas once they try to integrate.
Children from the cities grow without knowing and learning about nature and what it provides. They grow fearing nature and animals.
So, it is quite clear that by mingling these children they will both benefit from knowledge from each other.

We are doing this so that today’s children will be tomorrows changemakers, that they begin to see the importance of a holistic educational training through the summer camps activities, learn about permaculture and how to live sustainably and most importantly, due to exchange of ideas and knowledge activities learn that both children from urban developed areas and the ones from rural undeveloped areas, have a lot to learn from one another.
We are doing this so that we can begin to break the discrepancy between the “two worlds” of urban children and rural children.

1. Taking educator training courses in an international school that implements this idea of growing children into change makers by holistic education, permaculture and sustainability.
2. Implementing the know how from the training courses into the summer camps by including permaculture workshops made together with the children from the rural areas that become guides/teachers for the urban children;
3. Work with therapists in order to tailor activities that are to happen during the camp that focus on social inclusion;
4. Developing outdoor activities: sustainable agriculture, farm workshops, planting seeds, growing plants and harvesting them, cooking together, exploring the woods, foraging, handcrafts workshops etc.

Children from rural and urban areas connect, communicate, become friends and work together in order to grow up and live a sustainable life in which segregation and social differences don't have a place anymore.
We aim to turn the children in the village into local guides or trainers for those in the city. It is a brand new perspective in which the village children learn to appreciate the slow lifestyle they have, the biodiversity of the place where they live and to present them to the children from the city in a way in which they feel valued. This works both ways, the city kids presenting issues of their daily life like the use of technology or the way their schools work.

By mingling children they benefit from knowledge from one another it has a big impact on social inclusion. Children from the villages will adapt and make friends, they will not stay away or feel excluded anymore, they will learn how to communicate better with children from urban areas about whom they think are better than themselves.
Children from the cities will also do so and not fear or resent poor children or roma children as they might realise while taking part in the activities and workshops inside the camp that they can learn a lot from this children that are living in villages. At the end of the camp the idea is that both categories will have learned from one another and take a step forward in realising that they have much more in common than they thought.

It is vital to pass on as much as one can to tomorrows adults in order for them to become responsible, having empathy and strong principles. We find it very important to work with children since they are such open minded in order to get to a point when there will be no more segregation and no more differences between children from rural and urban areas so that all of them have the same chances in life.
It is important to try to participate as much as one can to the education of tomorrow’s changemakers.

Travel and accommodation (both for children and for personnel and experts) - 15000
Personnel costs - 20000
Experts, trainers, therapists , artists - 10000
Communication, PR, Design - 5000

We would like to know what members of Civic Europe team and other people think is the most interesting and exciting activity that could be done with children in order to bring them closer together.
Also, it would be useful to us if you could connect us with teams that implement similar ideas.