How It Started
Kids.acadEMy started as the educational charity project of the company EveryMatrix. This project ran for three years in two of Bucharest’s Child Protective Services daycare centers: “Pinocchio” Center and “Casa din Tei” Center. It has recently evolved into a full grown Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and continues its activities, its mission remaining the same: to help children by offering them the chance to access quality education that would be otherwise unavailable to them, in these three topical domains : Computer Science, Math and English.
The project started its teaching activities in January 2015, with Pinocchio Center being the first to benefit from our program. Prior to this, the center was equipped, by EveryMatrix, with a full and modern computer lab, including furniture, computers and accessories, tablets and a large LED TV . We first started with teaching Computer Science and we registered remarkable progress and a great deal of enthusiasm, openness and willingness to learn from the kids. After about six months of activity, thoughts of expanding this program to another center emerged and concluded quickly in the form of another computer lab at the Casa din Tei Center. Starting from August 2015 we started preparing the children of this center also.
In 2019, the fifth year of our activity, we have expanded with an additional centre and an additional teacher as well . Since the beginning of the project, our team helped 150 children in their academic journeys. Three skilled teachers and two enthusiasts’ volunteers are currently contributing to this wonderful project.
The year 2020 was a challenging one for all of us. The first part was rewarding as it brought us an invitation to the Global First Lego League Detroit. After that, the pandemic brought us an isolation period, but we continued to support the kids through online means during the period. After that we braved and offered online school access and support to a part of the kids that wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend school. We expanded and offered Arts, Physical Education and Personal Development Classes in addition to Computers, English and Math.
We further helped children reach online school, children whose center got closed. We offered them school support and equipment.
We had a strong start in 2021. We inked a new partnership with Bucharest’s Sector 4 Child Protective Services and we enrolled to our activities two of their Day Centers: “Eu si prietenii mei” Center and “Casa Sperantei” Center. To be able to handle these two centers we enlarged our team accordingly by adding another IT teacher and an English teacher.
Mission
The mission of this project is to break these kids from their social heritage by providing them access to things that wouldn’t otherwise be available to them in normal circumstances: computers, tablets, smartphones and knowledge. We want these children to be able to access higher grade education and become an inspiration for their community.
In order to establish a greater bond between us and the children and in the same time give them the vision of what they can achieve, the children visit our company on a regular basis and are being involved in activities that can further open new doors in their development. Given the good progress and considering the needs of these children we expanded the project further, by starting similar Math and English teaching programs in these centers. The continuous progress and good results are just an incentive for further expansion both to new centers and new activities.