When the financial means are few and the bureaucracy is mean, the meaning of resourceful adult educators becomes obvious.

Leonard Andreescu has worked with street children and adults for well over a decade and though the majority of the individual projects have been carried out successfully, a global strategy integrating the developed methodology and experience accumulated is still missing.

Ten years ago Leonard started working on a project bringing children and adults living on or of the streets into forms of formal and non-formal education by making education available on the streets as a first step towards bringing the people of the street into the established system of education and let them have a second or first chance.

- “Our main project was designed for economically exploited children and young adults. As it happened most of them, about 90%-95% were Roma.”

However the legislation at that time only allowed children under ten to enroll in first grade and left a considerable number of vulnerable persons outside the educational system. - “We found various means, legal tricks in order to allow the older children and young adults to go to school and to get their formal school documents/records. We got some special approvals so we could use the same methodology as they used in prisons for illiterates.”

-“Now, since 2004 - 2005 the law has been changed and everyone is allowed to go to school, in a formal manner, in a special form called "The second Chance". The beneficiaries are, as mentioned before, Roma, both children and some adults – just a few. They study with a teacher hired by Save the Children, according to the curricula issued by the Ministry of Education and they are enrolled formally in a partner school which releases the school records.”

A Mobile School

Even the Second Chance program is too big a first step for some and doesn’t reach the most marginalized. -“Since then we have taken a step further and brought the learning and entertainment activities to the streets with a project we call “Mobile School”. We teach basic skills, but first of all we make the participants aware of the risks they are facing on the streets. There are still many difficulties for the Romas, especially for the adults to go to school: no IDs – and we have to get it after a long time through a complex procedure in court, no material means – no money for books and school supplies, no clothes or footwear, discriminations, culture, or the lack of a culture of education – education is useless and it doesn’t feed you now, today. ”.