"Every young person I meet tells a story" - Adeline Duca, Fundraising Director GO-AHEAD Association
In 2017 we started with the personal development pilot program in Tărtășești with 15 students and 15 teachers. EDURIGHTS4GIRLS project gave us the opportunity to support the largest personal development program of the association, because we were able to work with 480 female students and 210 teachers from 15 high schools in Neamț and Suceava.
I chose to get involved in this initiative because of some personal needs I had as a teenager, which I have found over time in far too many people, and I really wanted to change something: the need to talk about my emotions, the need to be listened to and accepted, the need to be advised and given feedback, the freedom to be authentic and to be able to speak my mind in a safe environment.
Every young person I meet tells a story, a story that I listen to with emotion, a story that often moves me, a story that often brings me to tears and sleepless nights, where I keep constructing speeches in my mind that inspire, that give confidence, that have the power to change the outcome of the story. That's because nothing brings me more joy than when our paths cross again and I learn how these young people have chosen to have courage, have chosen to fight for their dreams no matter how many hardships their story throws in their way, and they do so with perseverance and confidence, being both serious and serene, professional, continuing to learn from what life has to offer.
There are many stories, of young people who assess themselves as unhappy, sad, unadapted and ashamed, young people who are often offended or forgotten, helpless, not listened to either by their parents or their teachers, young people whose future is unclear because there is no one to inspire their confidence and motivation, young people who are afraid to be authentic in a world that often attacks and criticises them, young people who do not know what to do with all these emotions, stories in which the GO-AHEAD Association is involved in order to offer them another future, a future closer to their dreams, towards which they dare not look up.
We support these young people throughout their personal development programme, providing them all the resources that can help them in the act of taking their story into their own hands and rewriting not only the ending, but also the journey. We do these things because it is of immeasurable importance to bring young people into the community, young people who are self-reliant, involved and strong, young people who can contribute to a better society from which we all benefit.
Now, I'd like you to do an exercise of imagination: what would the story of our world look like if every human had the courage to pursue their dreams?
Do you have the courage to donate? https://go-ahead.ro/doneaza