"Alongside UiPath Foundation we organized two online events for children from their programs: one in the form of an online camp and another one around the winter holidays. The Ascendis team created two online experiences for children, volunteers and members of the organization in which they had the opportunity to review, play, chat and build virtual albums together, about their passions and plans for the future.  I believe that for children these online camp activities have meant a way of keeping in touch with colleagues and volunteers – people they admire and feel they have to learn from. 

They thus strengthened a friendship relationship during the pandemic period difficult to manage for each of them. At the same time, they experienced a different kind of online interaction with an emphasis on action, expression, creativity, participation and play. 

I think this exercise is useful for them to be able to see themselves more often in participatory contexts where their voice is heard and learn to collaborate.  These interventions are basically laboratories in which courage is obtained from different combinations of human activities and interactions. 

In the end, they demonstrate that it can be done: that the effort is a reliable friend to succeed in the long term and that there are people who are here to support the children on their way to the future."

"We have been working with UiPath Foundation since September 2020, offering online English lessons to a group of more than 100 children, ages 11 to 16, from the foundation's intervention communities.  For us, as a teaching organization, the main challenges in this context created by the COVID-19 pandemic were related to the transition of activity online. Children participating in meditations had to break through the barrier of shyness, their reluctance to speak and attend classes, but most of all they had to overcome the discomfort created by problematic situations at home.  

As professors of the British Council and as an organization, we believe that educational opportunities should be available to everyone, and working with UiPath Foundation has allowed us to reach children in communities that we would not normally have access to. 

For our teachers it was incredible to be able to give children the opportunity to express their ideas and opinions in a learning environment where they feel safe, respected, encouraged and listened to. 

We strongly believe that this is vital to help children gain courage and be free to express themselves.  When education is seen as a two-way street between teachers and students, when opinions are heard, everyone benefits, and children become more confident and understand that their voice also matters."

"We have worked with our partners at UiPath Foundation since 2019, to jointly develop and implement various educational activities for children in our programs. Future Readiness is a program initiated in 2019 and concluded in February 2020 for teachers and parents of children in the program, with the aim of raising awareness of the changes that technology has in society and making them more willing to support children in developing these skills. 

The program was carried out in 5 of the communities where UiPath Foundation intervenes, in Galați, Bucharest, Cluj, Bârlad and Vaslui.

Also, with the online shift of the school activity, UiPath Foundation camp with the children in the programs had to be moved online. Fortunately, we have planned a shift to online, and since 2017 we have been working on a kit that can allow children to transfer their experiences from camps, even at home, and this kit has been an extremely important tool for switching to online, an effect caused by the pandemic. I think these very practical activities, where children are building something, are the kind of experiences that greatly increase their confidence and courage - because it is something tangible, done with their own hands. Often, in the educational process you also need to see practical things that are happening at that time and give children courage.

Working with UiPath Foundation was a breath of oxygen, because they trusted what we were doing and entrusted us with these projects, gave us confidence and helped us grow."

"UiPath Foundation has taken strategic steps to improve and implement its policies and practices to protect children, with a focus on the performance of their partners.  Together we analyzed the child protection policy and produced a review report, with recommendations, before its implementation.  I believe that non-profit organizations need to raise awareness of children effectively so that children know more about our work and even help us have a better impact."

"By partnering with UiPath Foundation we set out to support children in communities supported by the foundation with prophylaxis and dental treatment services using the association's mobile dental office and teams of volunteer dentists, under the umbrella of the project "Oral education, prevention and nutrition for the oral health of children from marginalized rural backgrounds, through the mobile dental office of Zâna Merciluță." 

For everyone, the COVID-19 pandemic meant a rethinking of the activity and the same was for us. We were unable to make scheduled trips to communities, including those in partnership with UiPath Foundation. Fortunately, we were able to carry out oral prophylaxis activities for the foundation communities thanks to the communication and organization of the team and local partners. We basically sent to each child in the program a package of oral prophylaxis products (paste and toothbrush, a monodose for fluoridation and an information document for parents about the offices under contract with the county insurance company, as well as the list of interventions to which children can have free access, within a monthly budget) and we conducted oral hygiene and nutrition webinars. 

Bringing in communities where there is no access to dental services, which are offered free of charge and we inform communities about the importance of oral health and how to ensure it, we think that this is the impact of this project and well-being and courage are a positive consequence and a healthy teething, also."

"The partnership with UiPath Foundation has the strategic objective of implementing a sustainable education training system for children from vulnerable communities, ensuring them access to a modern education based on innovative technologies that facilitates the achievement of current skills and increased school performance, constituting also a point of attraction for children.  

This partnership results in an educational approach with a positive impact on children in communities facing exclusion, for various reasons, giving them a real chance at quality education, progress and, more broadly, the chance for a better future.

Together we have managed to build an active community, interested in the evolution of children at school, whose values are participatory learning, interconnection, curiosity, freedom of thought and expression."

"The partnership between Noi Orizonturi Foundation and UiPath Foundation is unique in Romania, especially for a program like this, which takes place online. It took people with a unique set of skills and experiences to create a partnership that can have an impact in this environment that is still foreign to us. Our role in this partnership is to develop teaching materials, called "recipes", that the mentors in the program use, but also to come up with a mentor training program. These recipes we designed for the mentoring program help children learn through experiences. They start an activity, think about the process and apply what they have learned from the activity, in external contexts. If you can connect with a child in an area of interest to them, you will have access to a vast area of informed learning opportunities.

The biggest challenge was to take their experiences and knowledge to work with children online. When mentoring happens normally, physically, you don't have to consider accessing the internet or whether participants have a quiet space available at home, so we had to think about how each child can have access to these materials and be productive. We had to adapt and, with the support of the UiPath Foundation, we were able to get the best possible result."

"The partnership developed with the UiPath Foundation team is one close to our heart, as it has given us the opportunity to contribute to the harmonious development of children from vulnerable communities in Romania.

In this collaboration, our role is to provide support in the area of emotional health. Here we can include both psychological assessments, which help local coordinators understand how to build a development plan for each child, depending on their typology and needs, as well as psychotherapy/logopedic sessions, where we have noticed that a service of this type would contribute to this development plan.  From our point of view, the most important aspect when it comes to supporting children from vulnerable communities to gain courage, is to be with them, without making them feel different, to empathize and to assume the role of a model, to which the child will relate and to which he will follow advice, even if it means taking him out of his comfort zone.

I would like to mention that during this collaboration, I have seen this approach from all the people involved and I felt that their power comes from a sincere desire to give these children access to some resources and opportunities that seem to us to be a normality."

The most important things that a human being needs in order to live and progress in today’s society are health and education.

The collaboration with UiPath Foundation is a helping hand offered to children from vulnerable communities. 

UiPath Foundation’s initiative to offer a real support for these children is the basement for a better society, where common sense and the equality of chances are the most important. 

We all know that the access these children have to medical services and educational opportunities is not easy, because of the numerous factors -   the families’ lack of education, the absence or the inefficiency of the state authorities that are supposed to make efforts towards the social integration of these people etc. What our partnership did was to facilitate their access to medical and prevention services, essential for their health: dental, ophthalmology, general medicine, gynecology, blood tests. 

The access to these services should be part of our days’ normality, no matter the social class we belong to, thus ensuring a good health state and a self-esteem increase, both essential for the social integration. 

"Our partnership with UiPath Foundation began in 2019 and consisted of training volunteers for their role as mentors. We have created a manual dedicated to the mentor training process, we have organized training sessions to prepare volunteers in the new role as well as psychological support sessions for mentors and mentor-mentee guidance through recurring follow-up meetings. 

If we are talking about 2020, our challenges have been multiple, but the transition to online has come first. We started with the transition from face-to-face follow-up sessions to online follow-up sessions, we continued with the redesign of the training structure to be delivered online in a shorter time and according to the current needs of UiPath Foundation. Looking at the model of intervention, however, we believe that when it comes to supporting children from vulnerable communities to gain courage, it also requires a good mentor: a person who cares about himself, the child and the mentoring, empathic, who supports, encourages, guides, puts healthy boundaries and explores with the child and who meets his or her needs in the mentoring relationship."