For ten years now we have been part­ner­ing with the CONCORDIA Social Pro­jects organ­isa­tion, which is com­mit­ted to improv­ing liv­ing con­ditions for dis­advant­aged chil­dren and young people and their fam­ilies in south­east­ern Europe.

Ini­tially fund­ing was provided by the Franz-W. Aumund-Stif­tung but since 2020 we have been sup­port­ing CONCORDIA via the Aumund Found­ation. Cur­rently we are focus­ing on the Edu-Cam­pus pro­ject in Ploi­esti, which is a good hour’s drive from Bucharest, and com­prises a primary school and a voca­tional school.

We would have loved to attend the cam­pus open­ing cere­mony in 2020, how­ever Covid of course thwarted our plans. But in Novem­ber 2023 dur­ing our trip to south­east­ern Europe we were all the more impressed when we were able to see for ourselves the work being car­ried out.

Whilst approx­imately 50% of the primary school stu­dents on the Edu-Cam­pus are chil­dren from mar­gin­alised fam­ilies, the voca­tional school is ori­ented almost exclus­ively towards youths and young adults from the “social pro­tec­tion sys­tem”. For the nine-month dur­ation of their appren­tice­ship the young people are not only trained to work in gast­ronomy, bakery and hor­ticul­ture, but in the ancil­lary “school for life” they learn to over­come every­day chal­lenges such as how to open a bank account and plan per­sonal fin­ances, how to arrive at work on time very day, and how to com­munic­ate with super­iors. In 2024 the Aumund Found­ation fin­anced a whole class of appren­tices qual­ify­ing as “gast­ronomy spe­cial­ists”.

A mov­ing sur­prise awaited us at the end of the cam­pus tour. As a Chris­tian organ­isa­tion CONCORDIA has a tra­dition of plant­ing a tree to com­mem­orate deceased pat­rons. We were able to act­ively par­ticip­ate in the cere­mony and wit­ness the esteem in which our Founder was held.

In 2024, changes in national legis­lation regard­ing the fin­ancing of liv­ing expenses for young people who have spent part of their lives in res­iden­tial care (care leav­ers) presen­ted the organ­iza­tion with a major chal­lenge. Now, the Aumund Found­ation is a proud part­ner in the three-year pilot pro­ject for the new struc­ture as a voca­tional cen­ter. CONCORDIA col­lab­orates with seven local voca­tional schools and, as a valu­able com­ple­ment to classroom the­ory, is respons­ible for the prac­tical train­ing of at least 170 young people aged 14 to 19 each year. At the EduCampus, these young people are not only pre­pared for their future careers as skilled work­ers in the hos­pit­ality, bak­ing, and hor­ticul­ture sec­tors. In the accom­pany­ing “School for Life,” they learn how to man­age every­day life: How do I open a bank account and plan my fin­ances? How do I arrive at work on time every day? How do I com­munic­ate with super­visors?

The aim is to provide real sup­port, espe­cially for young people from vul­ner­able fam­ilies, in their career choices and per­sonal devel­opment, and to sus­tain­ably reduce the high school dro­pout rate.