Safer Seating for Varatic Villagers
A U.S. Peace Corps project
Thank you for your donations that made this valuable project possible!
Please join us in this slide show as we tour through the progress of this project.
Take a tour of the village in this slide show.
Here is the original presentation made to donors back in early 2016.
Several times every year, hundreds of people from in and around the village of Varatic, Moldova congregate at their village stadium for civic events, festivals and soccer games.
Rush hour traffic in a village near Varatic as geese flock to the grocery store, for their morning coffee?...
As they have done for decades, they sit on concrete bleachers, which over the years, and due to poor, Soviet construction, have deteriorated to become coarse blocks of heavy gravel. |
A local priest, Father Ghennedy Dascal, has organized an activity center for area children and adults, named appropriately, "Tineri și Maturi," which is Romanian for, "Youths and Adults." |
Father Dascal and his volunteers renovated a few rooms in an abandoned school building, where they moved a ping-pong table, exercise equipment, chess boards, and chairs and tables for classes, meetings and conferences.
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Dascal started a movement to restore the stadium bleachers. He and several volunteers from the community want to resurface the concrete and install plastic stadium seats. Using local labor and supplies, volunteers and the village can cover more than half of the project's $7,083 cost, so we need to raise only $2,690. |
Father Ghennedy Dascal, left, Mayor Motelica Dumitru and my partner, Alexandru Crigan at the village soccer stadium they hope to rebuild,
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Area children who volunteered to clean the stadium this spring pose with the village mayor.
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The community is proud of its stadium, and they use it often, for (each year): - Six major religious and holiday events, seating up to 1,000 people. - 3-4 civic meetings, attended by 700-1000 people. - 30 soccer games watched by more than 200 people. The stadium is also used nearly every day in season by area children, and for soccer practices and other sports events. |
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Every penny of this budget — and every penny of your donation — will be accounted for in accordance with U.S. Peace Corps policy. We have set up a fundraising campaign on the Peace Corps website to help the people of Varatic build a cleaner and safer stadium in which to play sports, strengthen their community, and enjoy religious fellowship. It is a no-fee system, so every penny will reach this project. Your donation will go a long way, and is greatly appreciated!
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So, anyway, during a visit to Varatic, where we worked on details for this project, Father Dascal invited me (insisted) to his home for dinner. They had a beautiful spread of Moldovan food set up in the living room, and they offered me a chair, while his two sons, dressed in matching blue plaid shirts, ate while sitting on the bed.
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