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Nurture Teachers' Potential aims to facilitate access for teachers in disadvantaged communities to up-to-date and necessary educational resources for quality education. Schools in such areas often do not have access to educational training tailored to the needs of children. They need encouragement and it is the teachers who inspire and help them find their voice, passions and strengths to make tomorrow a better day for them, but also for those around them.
The goal of our strategic partnership with Teach for Romania is to give teachers access to the constant training they need and to modern teaching techniques necessary for a quality educational process, thus aiming to improve students' school performance by finding better and more appropriate methods to arouse their curiosity and interest in school. All these initiatives help reduce the school drop-out these communities face, gain the courage to dream and access the right educational opportunities for a better future.
10 teachers from Brașov, Buzău, Dâmbovița, Galați counties, in the second year of the Teach for Romania program, received training on key skills and support from Teach for Romania tutors, to strengthen these skills and integrate them into the teaching process. In addition, teachers received micro-grants to initiate and implement projects in their own schools or communities;
Between February and October 2020, 30 teachers from the public education system in Galați and Vaslui counties and in Bucharest participated in the pilot phase of the Training as Leadership program, which began in February with offline meetings and, with the arrival of the pandemic, was carried out online, with the content adapted as such. Through this program we aim to support teachers to adapt their teaching techniques and methods to the specific needs of students and to the requirements of the 21st century context;
Impact monitoring and evaluation, through these activities we aim to support the effort of Teach for Romania to measure the immediate results, as well as the medium and long-term changes that their intervention model aims to generate among Romanian students and teachers. In this way, our partners can find out what are the most efficient components of their programs and decide, on the basis of concrete data, what improvements and strategic directions they can adopt in the future.
Teach for Romania was in the middle of preparations for the summer academy that all the teachers in their program go through, when the pandemic came. "And the speed race has turned into an obstacle course," says Iulia Pielmuş, executive director of Teach for Romania. "What was defining for us in 2020 was to get out of the reactivity zone, and UiPath Foundation stood close, daring to dream and create together, even in these times of crisis", adds Mirela Ştețco, training director at Teach for Romania.
What Iulia saw in our partnership was the ability to create educational micro ecosystems, to bring together NGOs that have complementary social and educational services. "And we were able, somehow, to synchronize our interventions, going to schools in the vulnerable communities of Vaslui, Galați, Botoşani and Ferentari.”"We made a new, head-to-tail program, suitable for the new context, and the obstacle course turned into a relay, because we had with us experts, organizations that wanted to help us start the first Academy of Leadership, Digital Pedagogy and Collaborative Learning. And we've been in a marathon ever since," says Iulia, and it seems important that they stayed on the battlefield, which was also possible because of the support they received from partners like us during this period.
"I believe that this gives the partnership a stake and creates the context of a sustainable impact, whether we are talking about our impact (at Teach for Romania) or that we can inspire other organizations to invest in education," says Iulia. "Basically, our mission and values are common; we have the same beliefs: that systemic interventions, the strategic approaches and synchronization of interventions between organizations are needed."
You have reached the end of our activity report for 2020.
With every story of courage discovered in the report – of the children in our educational programs, of our strategic partners, of mentors and volunteers and of our team, we have tried to convey our message about COURAGE - that was and will be a source of energy for the future! Thank you for going through the entire collection of stories about the programs and initiatives that try to generate a long term change. We, at the UiPath Foundation, will continue to be present in the lives of the children we support, to help them discover and make best use of their potential, and to ensure that every child or teacher has access to quality learning to be able to dream for a better future. We invite you and stay close to us and to the incredible stories about courage from our communities. To learn more about us and our initiatives, you can follow us here:
