2023 on HOLD: Oxford for Romania Summer School

Dear supporters,

We have decided to put on hold the Oxford for Romania Summer School 2023 and the project as we know it. It’s been 7 years since the first cohort of young Romanians joined this unique project which brought everyone involved lots of enthusiasm, as well as sleepless nights.

What started as a nice idea in a living room in Oxford, became during this time a life-changing experience for 120 young people in Romania and a thoroughly fulfilling project shared by more than 50 Romanian professionals throughout the UK and beyond.

However, the post-pandemic and post-Brexit context showed us that the project, as we imagined it, is not tenable anymore. During these years, our community has dispersed. Members of our core executive team moved out of Oxford and, as we shifted online, we lost the physical base that brought everyone together in the first place. Juggling families, careers and working pro-bono for the charity became a greater challenge. Finally, organising the summer school in Oxford became ever more costly, so we had to reconsider the viability of the entire project.

It’s been a difficult process that led us to the decision to pause the summer school, our flagship program. As we attempt to reframe the structure of our organisation and volunteering community, we are looking for ways that allow us to stay true to our ethos: generosity, transformation and togetherness.

What’s next?

In this new phase, we want to continue honouring “Oxford for Romania”, a name that brought together a like-minded community. Your contribution and support was instrumental in bringing this vision to life - for that we are forever grateful!

With a more sustainable future in mind, we’ve made a few changes. We would like to let you know that:

• For smoother decision making we reduced the size of our Board of Trustees. Three of nine members were voted to be part of our new Board. Alma Iatan, Ciprian Plostinar and Cristian Soitu and will spend the remainder of 2023 redesigning the future of the charity.

• For future organisational design we welcome contributors who invested time and effort into this project to contact us at info@oxfordforromania.org with proposals that can bring to life the next stage of “Oxford for Romania”.

A report detailing what we’ve achieved in 2022 will be shared soon. Until then, we wish you all the best and hope you stay close to us.

As always, “all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.” (Lewis Carroll)

Thank you for being part of our story!

Yours sincerely,

The Oxford for Romania Board members,

Alma, Ciprian, Cristi, Maria, Mariuca, Oana L., Oana R., Sorina, and Victor