Annual Report 2018 - REGEN Foundation

2018
Annual
Report
A Chance to Succeed

Our Vision: Empowered and independent children,
youth, women and men, who responsibly participate
and contribute to the community life.
Our Mission: To provide a context, opportunities
and resources for people to be transformed and
regenerated, through teaching Christian-moral values
and life learning skills and using education as the main
venue of achieving our vision.

6
8Shine Little Stars
After-School Program
10
4Meet our Team
Homework Clubs
Horizon of Hope
12
Center
22
Wood Shop
Room
14Distribution
16
Summer Camps
Projects
18Special
20
2018 Financial
Report
Photo Gallery
Table of Contents

Cosmina Bunaci was
with us as Executive
Director until
September this year.
Gabi Pîrvu
Homework Clubs & Distribution Center
Carly Sebentsfeldt
Horizon of Hope Center
Mirela Robu
Shine Little Stars After-School Program

Meet our
Team
Petry and Kyle Groza
President & Founder
Edi and Ioana Constantinescu
Horizon of Hope Center

Homework
Clubs
The purpose of our homework clubs is to
invest in the education of kids in poorer villages
and neighborhoods who may not otherwise
succeed at school.
We help the kids with their homework and give
them extra lessons in Math and Romanian. We
also play games, sing together, and teach
lessons from the Bible.
This year we were very excited to see an
increase in enrollment in the homework clubs
at all three of our locations.

Left: March 8 is Women’s Day in Romania. The
kids celebrated by thanking their mothers through
song, poetry, and giving flowers. This gave us a
chance to connect and strengthen our relationship
with several of the moms.
Several of our students have
made significant progress this
year, especially in the area of
mathematics.
Damian (11) was especially
excited when he learned the
numbers 10-50 and began to
see the patterns in how
numbers work!

Some of our kids showed significant potential;
however, meeting only once a week at the
homework club, we simply couldn’t invest as
much time and energy into them as we would
have liked.
So, at the beginning of 2018, we were excited
to launch Shine Little Stars. Three days a week,
we bring kids to our center for an after-school
program in which they learn Romanian,
English, math, music, practical skills, Bible
lessons, social skills, and more.
Mirela, our SLS teacher, applied for and
received a grant for the Little Einstein project,
in which our kids learned about shapes and the
solar system, and had the opportunity to make
their own inventions out of wood.
“I am so excited when I see the kids every day. Sometimes I’m tired
beforehand, but when the kids come in smiling and giving me hugs, I
am ready to give them everything I have in me. We have learned that in
order to succeed at what we do, we must have perseverance.”
~Mirela Robu, SLS teacher

Shine Little
Stars

Horizon of
Hope Center
In May we hosted a training through Lifeline Children’s
Services. We invited social workers, school staff, and
other officials from the community to come learn from a
biblical perspective, alongside our team, about how to
work with kids from hard places. It was an invaluable
learning experience for us to understand the real
struggles that our kids are going through under the
surface.
Cristian came to us in April, finding
himself in a dilemma: No one would
hire him because he didn’t have a
place to stay, and no one would rent
to him because he didn’t have a job.
Within a month, we were able to
help him get an apartment and a
job, and now he is successfully
established in the nearby city of
Sibiu.
Horizon of Hope is a center for young adults where they can
come to grow in character and learn the skillsets they need to
not only be independent, but also to induce change in their
own lives and in the lives of their families and communities.
Since its initial kickoff at the end of 2017, Horizon of Hope has
been going through a streamlining process in order to
optimize the program to give its students the best possible
chance to succeed.

This spring, AOS (Horizon of Hope Association) officially
merged with the REGEN Foundation. This allowed our
students better access to the other resources and programs
that REGEN has to offer, such as the wood shop, clothes and
shoes distribution room, and partnerships with local
businesses.
2018 saw many challenges, but also many victories. We
received 10 students this year, being the first full year of the
program being up and running. Courses and activities this
year included Computer Skills, Character-building, Cooking,
Music, and Woodworking.
Thanks to our generous
donors, in May we were able
to purchase 5 bicycles for
the center, with which we
have already had many
adventures!

Wood
Shop
Creativity Workshop
In the spring, we organized a day
for our kids to come and create
something special with us. The
boys worked in the wood shop
with Petry and John, while the
girls painted on blocks of wood
with Leta, Gabi, and Mirela.

In April and May this year John and Leta Haggard
from Little Rock, Arkansas joined our team for
two months. Leta spent most of her time sharing
the gospel while tutoring English, while John
taught woodworking to the boys from the Horizon
of Hope Center.
John and Leta were a catalyst in getting our wood
shop up and running, even organizing much of
the fundraising themselves. Thanks to them, we
were able to begin producing a few wooden
products this year.
Under John’s instruction, the boys at the Horizon
of Hope center made novelty birdhouses and
wooden tic-tac-toe games that could be sold.
They also made furniture for our own use in the
wood shop and at the center, as well as
producing a much-needed new set of cupboards
for the kitchen at our local church.
In the future, we hope to continue to expand this
program, teaching our students woodworking
while at the same time providing a small income
for the program.

The idea for the Distribution Room program
was born out of seeing a need for more than
just clothing. Every time we brought clothing
to give out at one of our ministry locations,
people ended up fighting or being
dissatisfied. Despite our efforts to use the
best possible methods of distribution, people
would still be displeased and ungrateful.
Finding a way to share clothes and shoes
equally and to many people seemed
impossible until we had the idea of a central
distribution room, where families could come
one at a time.
With the help of a group of students from
Christ the Rock Church from Appleton
Wisconsin, we set up a distribution room
where the parents of the children we work
with can come and choose what they need.
2018 was a great first full year for the
Distribution Room. This year, over 50 bags of
clothes were donated and more than 40
families benefited from this program.

Distribution
Room
“This year I met so many women who are living in bad conditions, unhappy in
their marriages, maybe even don’t have electricity or running water. But
despite all this, they manage to stay thankful. And they never stop fighting for
their kids. They inspire me.”
~Gabi Pîrvu, Distribution Room Coordinator

Summer
Camps
After hearing the leaders’
testimonies, many kids
expressed a desire to know
more about God. Călin recently
lost his grandmother, his only
caregiver. This week at camp he
said to one of our leaders that
he wants to change the
direction his life is headed.

At camp, our kids have lots of fun playing games
and exploring God’s creation. They hear the
Gospel and experience it firsthand as they
interact with the leaders and volunteers.
Several of the girls were very touched after one
of the volunteers from America shared her
testimony. It gave them a chance to understand
the message of God’s love for them in a way they
could personally relate to.
As always, HUGE thanks to Heart of Hope
Foundation and Camp of the Good Shepherd for
providing everything for our first week of camp!
And also a huge shout out to the team that came
from America to show Christ’s love to our kids!
REGEN Educational
Camp 2018
Many of the kids we work with are very behind in
school, therefore every year we have a special
camp in order to invest in their education in a
very special way. We focus on three areas:
reading, writing, and math.
This year, Luca learned his letters and numbers
this year at camp. Ionuț learned how to count to
10. Four of our girls learned the alphabet. Many
of the other kids were given a chance to practice
skills that they had already learned in school.

Some of our older kids we see only a few times
a year once they age out of our homework
clubs. This fall we decided to invite the teenage
girls from our programs to a special “Girls’
Weekend” at the Horizon of Hope Center in
Săvăstreni.
The weekend kicked off Friday night with a
movie night. After everyone arrived and got
settled in, we started the film and made
popcorn. Then Saturday was a full day of
games, crafts, and grilling out for lunch. Ioana
shared a special lesson about finding our
identity in Christ, and Mirela organized a craft in
which the girls made their own “Home Sweet
Home” signs.
All in all, this special weekend was a great
chance for us to connect with the girls and share
the love of Christ with them.
Girls weekend at Săvăstreni

Christmas Box project
boxes
170 18
volunteers
3villages
60families
Every year we pack dozens of shoeboxes for the
kids in our villages. They are filled with toys,
school supplies, winter hats and gloves, sweets,
and hygiene items. This year was no exception.
A special thanks to all our volunteers who
helped us pack and pass out the boxes, and to
those of you who gave financially to make this
project possible!

2018 Financial Report
Total expenses in 2018:
281,602 RON ($70,400 USD)
Total income in 2018:
270,913 RON ($67,728 USD)
Regen’s economic activities in the year 2018 consisted
of production and sale of wooden products, such as
cupboards and other furniture, birdhouses, and
wooden games. Income from economic activities
totaled 6,920 RON ($1,756 USD), and expenses for the
purpose of economic activities totaled 6,118 RON
($1,553 USD).
TEAM GROWTH AT REGEN

A HUGE
THANK
YOU
to all of our financial supporters, partners,
volunteers, and prayer warriors!
Without all of you, none of this would be
possible!

Photo
Gallery