Dancu & Ciora, Moldova
100+
£Ongoing
Emmaus Club – A wonderful development program for children with special educational needs in Dancu.
Besides many problems the families will face in Dancu, there are many parents who are often baffled by the problems presented by a child with learning disabilities. Often this “invisible disability” does not become obvious until a child reaches school age. Even then, difficulties may be subtle and hard to recognise.
Originally children were ‘sent away’ when they couldn’t keep up with their peers but thanks to the Emmaus Club they receive extra lessons in order to keep up. The project is now welcomed by the local school and our teachers work with them to help particular children. This now also involves children who come from very chaotic and sometimes violent families as well as children that have been left with grandparents while their parents work abroad. All the children we help come from poor families.
LATEST UPDATE – May 2026
The “Emmaus” Club is more than just an after-school program; it is a beacon of hope for primary school students (grades 1–4) who need extra support to keep pace with the school curriculum. Running daily since September, our project reaches out to children from diverse family backgrounds, providing them not only with academic assistance but also with love, stability, and fundamental life lessons.
The heart of our program beats in the classrooms, where, after regular school hours, the teachers worked tirelessly with the students. The progress is visible: some have caught up on missed material, while others have gained more confidence in their own abilities.
In addition to the work in the classrooms we set up a partnership with the ‘New Hope’ Community Centre and every Tuesday and Thursday, this center became a second home for the children. The children were transported safely to the centre by our team and before any educational activity, the children were welcomed by our cook who prepared a warm lunch giving them the necessary energy to learn. After lunch, one of our teachers conducted interactive English lessons.
This year, we placed a special emphasis on experiential learning and celebrating Christian values and the Easter holidays were a time of deep fellowship. We organised a special Easter cake (cozonac) decorating activity which the children loved. Beyond the culinary fun, the most important moment was the spiritual one. The children gathered and listened to the biblical history of Jesus’ sufferings, death, and Resurrection. This was not just a history lesson, but a lesson about sacrifice, hope, and unconditional love.
To crown a year of hard work, we dedicated the final week to a memorable field trip to DT Family Farm. The children visited the cattle and calf farm, as well as the cheese production facility. They explored the bakery and enjoyed a lunch of pizza and juice and then had fun at the children’s playground, turning an ordinary day into a precious memory.
Here are the stories of a couple of the children we support
‘B’ comes from a large and vulnerable family. Her parents are separated, and her mother struggles with severe alcoholism. With six children in the household, she often carries responsibilities far beyond her years. Each morning, she takes her younger siblings to kindergarten before attending school herself, which frequently causes her to arrive late. At home, she helps care for the younger children, leaving little time for her own childhood. Despite these challenges, ‘B’ remains eager to learn and is determined to succeed.
At the Emmaus Club, she receives academic support in Romanian, Mathematics, and English, helping her stay on track with her studies. Equally important, she receives encouragement, guidance, and emotional support that are often missing in her daily life. We are delighted by her progress and hopeful for her future success. Her growth reflects the impact of the Emmaus program and the generosity of supporters who make this work possible.
‘W’ has faced significant hardships from an early age. Before joining us, he lived with his mother and younger brother in extreme poverty. Their mother lost her parental rights and the children were forced to leave their family home.
A ray of hope arrived when their aunt from Dancu welcomed them into her care. Although she provides a safe and loving home, the emotional burden of the past remains heavy. At school, ‘W’ is often quiet and withdrawn. One day, he tearfully shared that his father had passed away, revealing the deep sorrow he carries.
At the Emmaus Club, we strive to offer ‘W’ not only academic support but also comfort, understanding, and encouragement. Through kindness and personal attention, we help him regain confidence and hope. His story reminds us that children need more than material support—they need compassion, care, and the opportunity to build a brighter future.
Message from the Emmaus team – May 2026
Dear Partners of the “Link to Hope” Organisation,
Through this report, we wish to bring you not just data and photos, but a glimpse into the transformed lives of these children. The “Emmaus” Club would not exist without you. Your generosity fully covered the expenses for food (including the joy of an Easter cake), transportation, and the remuneration of our dedicated team of staff. You provided us with the resources to feed the bodies and nurture the souls of these children.
We have had a highly successful year, filled with wonderful time spent together, learning, and growing. We are enormously glad that despite the challenges in their families, these children still want to learn and stay for these extra hours. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and look forward to the future with hope, genuinely wishing to continue this project together next year. Your support is a direct investment in their lives.
With respect and deep gratitude,
The “Emmaus” Club Team:
Veronica, Lilia, Daniela, Ina, Inga, Maria and Ana.
LATEST UPDATE – November 2023
By the grace of God and with the priceless help of you, our reliable, faithful partners, we want to tell you with much joy that we successfully finished the 13th year of the educational programme ‘Emaus club’. This club is dedicated to helping children in disadvantaged families who need more support to master the school curriculum . It runs in both the school setting and the community centre ‘New Hope’.
Through your generosity we have had a very good year in the Emaus club and have managed to carry out all the activties that we proposed at the beginning of the year. In the Dancu school 136 hours of activity have taken place during the academic year 2022-2023 spent at school with 26 children in total. We also managed to have 35 Saturdays (70 hours of activity) with 30 children at the New Hope Community Centre teaching Maths, Romanian and English.
Within this project the children received help with their homework and also participated in group activities aimed at strengthening their confidence, self control and co-operation. The children also received 2 hot meals on the Saturday when the activities were held at the community centre.
During this year, the students completed a lot of homework, demonstrated their skill in solving complex maths problems, read together and learnt to do good deeds: to help an adult, to litter pick, to compromise, to hug and to make new friends. They also ate well, participated in a range of educational games, played football and took full advantage of the breaks and the free time that they had.
Our biggest desire is that these children will come to love school and to benefit from the support that is dedicated to their needs within the project so that they want to do better and make progress at school. Their evaluation is based on both the progress they made within the project and on the basis of the qualifications they obtained at school.
We have travelled a long road but it never seemed difficult to us, as we always had a reliable partner ‘Link to Hope’ by our side, together with whom we rewrite the life stories of these wonderful children.
Our greatest joy is to see these children happy and encouraged by their dear teachers who share joy and offer them all the love and help they need. Unfortunately these children have many difficulties and too many worries for their age. The fact is that these children come from large families and from families with big problems, with severe poverty. Just think for a moment how difficult it can be for a parent to ensure good living conditions for their children to live in and to offer them all the necessary things for them to grow well and develop physically. Also imagine how a child might live and receive a good education when they live in a small, disadvantaged house that is often without warmth in the winter , without bread on the table and their parents are indifferent to the living conditions of the children. These are the shortcomings which are faced by many children in such families and lead to a total indifference that brings them much sadness and marks them for life.
It is for this reason that we are very happy that together with your help we are able to give them the support that they need throughout the school year and we are sure that they will not stop here but will continue with their studies as long as possible.
Now, we want to invite you on a journey in time, to look back at some of the good parts of the activities carried out in our programme during the academic year 2022- 2023. During this year they received help with their homework, they played, they sang, they participated in many creative activities and they learnt to smile. They learnt empathy, kindness, sincerity, how to share, how to forgive and how to grow up beautifully.
All of these magical experiences lived in the Emaus family have created a lot of memories which can never be erased! At the end of the year I congratulated all the students with all my heart and awarded them a diploma for participating in the club because they have learnt well throughout the year and we can’t wait for them to come again in autumn when we will discover wonderful things together again. But until that time I wished them a wonderful summer, full of fun and beautiful activities.
It is wonderful to do good works together! We have hearts full of gratitude for all the beautiful and dedicated people within our project, for all the effort you and your partners put into this project to sustain the extraordinary good educational project, for all the joy which we see on the faces of these wonderful children. Praise the Lord for all these wonderful gifts.
We are honored and grateful to be part of such a great team and we thank our partners for the support they give us every day!
We thank you partners with all our hearts for the support and faith you have given us in the 13 years of work. Together we bring joy into the hearts of children in difficult family situations who are at great risk of abandoning school. We thank you for the support and good collaboration and we assure you that all that we do we do with all our love and all our hearts for the children.
Teachers from the primary classes
The 1st – 4th classes are the classes which we teachers have led and guided the children in the Emaus club program sponsored by Link to Hope. The Emaus club is in its 13th year of running and without reservation we can say that through participating in this program, the children have shown real progress in overcoming their conditions and broadening their horizon’s.
The diverse activities that are undertaken every day make the children happy and help them to learn new things through play, attention and movement. This attitude has motivated the students to return the next day with the same joy of being at school and also in the Emaus club.
Apart from the activities that were undertaken daily, the hot meals that they received every Saturday were also an important part of the club and the children waited eagerly for the food, curious to find out what food they were about to receive.
Our daily activities varied from the usual resolving and explaining of homework, to a ball game on the sports field when the weather allowed, cutting, sticking and colouring, interactive games or the much loved immortal stories of childhood. We can not forget to mention our outing to the park, where we played together and not only that but we also had a time when we all cleaned up, collected the rubbish and took it to the correct place.
We conclude by thanking you on behalf of ourselves, the teachers directly involved in this work, the parents and especially the children for all the effort made everyday by all those who work for this programme to exist and work so well for the children who really need our help. We thank you very much.
With much love, The teachers, Ina Sonic, Ludmila Mardare, Ludmila Lungu, Inga Iacob, Ina Balcan, Lilia Gulica, Daniela Colteniuc,,
A child from the Emaus Club:
Dear Link to Hope,
“We want to thank you for all that you do for us. Due to this programme I have learnt new and very interesting things, to be more polite, to listen more and to be more confident. Before we were not sure of ourselves but now we are more confident and curious to learn new things. . We will really miss the program and our dear teachers during the summer. Thank you again for everything, in the programme we do many beautiful and interesting things. We love you so much!”
