The economic crisis has increased the number of impoverished Romanian children, mostly from rural areas, drop out of school each year.
Here’s another edition of “I want to be in the 9th grade” campaign. This year reached its seventh edition. The actors are the same: children from rural areas without material possibilities, World Vision Romania, KFC Romania and Pizza Hut Romania. World Vision will support children from counties as Iasi, Dolj, Valcea, Ialomita and Vaslui.
“Access to education in Romania is still a problem for many children and their families and the global economic and financial crisis has only made things worse. For seven years, we strive to play a role in these children lives, to help them go to school, to have a future and fight for it. Our customers stood beside us every year and together we raised funds for over EUR 240,000 in the first six years of the campaign. Only in this way, over 620 children could go to school. We hope this year to exceed a quarter of a million euro for the first seven years of the campaign, especially since we wanted to support a larger number of children than in previous years,” Mark Hilton, CEO KFC and Pizza Hut Romania, said in a press conference.
According to Oana Serban, PR & Communication Manager World Vision Romania, thanks to this program, 947 young people were able in six years to complete high school studies. “We pride each time with their results which encourage us to continue to support them – the high school graduation rate of our students was higher than the national one this year too and 69 percent of them were admitted to college. So far, 947 children with a precarious financial situation graduated high school due to <<I want to be in the 9th grade>> campaign, many of them continued their studies at university” said Oana Serban.
Currently, 154 children are enrolled in this project. From these funds raised by KFC and Pizza Hut in October, World Vision Romania aims to support 70 children registered in the program, 20 children more than in 2013, due to better than expected results of the previous campaign.
For the second consecutive year, Dani Otil – morning show host at Antena 1 – was present at campaign’s launch press conference, supporting the fundraising campaign.