Romania
Education for Disabled Children

Hand Rom is a school in Curtea de Arges, central Romania, which provides care and education for 60 children who have a range of disabilities including cerebral palsy, polio and muscular dystrophy.

33 children between the ages of 4 and 18 attend the school on a daily basis and benefit immensely from the opportunity to study in small classes with a lot of attention and guidance from their teachers.

Staff at the school provide specialist care in physical and cognitive rehabilitation and group therapy work. Occupational therapists from the project also visit disabled children at home within the local community. A number of children have been able to re-enter mainstream education as a result of the progress they made whilst studying at Hand Rom, and they continue to visit the school a couple of days a week for ongoing assessment and therapy work.

Costel Nicolae, director of this project, counts his involvement in the project as a privilege:
"No-one and nothing can take my disability from me, but with God's help I have found a mission in this life, putting into my work all my soul and my suffering, to establish this foundation"

WER provides funding for staff costs and general overheads at Hand Rom School.