Hercules Association launches HERCULARIUM, the major project dedicated to the children of Costești and the surrounding villages. Get involved too! Donate onlineor via bank transfer. and help us:
– Establish a modern library (multimedia room, computer room, comfortable reading spaces, playroom) within the Hercules Day Center
– Organize the Book Caravan regularly for children from neighboring villages who cannot easily reach Costești
– Encourage children’s love for reading and learning, better preparing them for the future
– Change parents attitudes toward education and raising children
Do you represent a responsible and generous company interested in impactful educational projects? Find out here how you can support us without additional costs (20% of profit) and contact us for a detailed presentation of the project.
Hercules Day Center is the most successful and longest-running social project in the south of Argeș County, the only day center in a poor community lacking economic opportunities, cultural life, or future prospects. For the 50 children from disadvantaged families who do their homework, play and eat daily at Hercules, our project is a lifesaver and an oasis of normality. The Hercules Day Center was launched in 2007 by the Hercules Association with the support of the Princess Margareta of Romania Foundation. Over time, the center has been funded exclusively from private sources: donations from responsible companies, foundations, and generous donors. Today, the Hercules Day Center operates with the support of the Vodafone Romania Foundation (partner since 2011) and H. Stepic CEE Charity, Vienna (partner since 2015).
Thanks to its involvement and genuine support in the community, the Hercules Association has become an important reference point and the true heart of the city and community of Costești.
What we want
In the beautiful and welcoming heritage building that hosts the Hercules Day Center, the Hercules Association aims to establish HERCULARIUM, a true modern and attractive learning center for children and young people from the city of Costești and the neighboring villages. We want to create a knowledge space for the entire community, not just for the beneficiaries of the Hercules Day Center. Hercularium will consist of a library, a reading room, a computer and multimedia room, a playroom for young children, a playground, a space for cultural events and parenting training.
Children from Costești and surrounding villages will be encouraged to gather around books and familiarize themselves with new technologies. Our goal is to help them experience as little cultural and educational disadvantage as possible compared to children raised in larger cities or wealthier environments. Limited exposure to educational experiences and a lack of stimuli for the development of intelligence or creativity, together with generally lower quality education in rural areas, later translate into inequality of opportunities for children from such environments. Furthermore, their parents will have access to the latest books and will participate in events and training on parenting and education.
Why this initiative
To encourage children’s love for books and ignite their appetite for knowledge
Children develop a love for reading and are interested in books when they are raised in an environment that fosters this love, when their interest in reading is stimulated from a very young age. Unfortunately, in families with low education levels, parents rarely stimulate their children’s intelligence, skill, and creativity before the children enter the public school system. Few families in our community can pass on this love for books through the power of personal example. To compensate for this, we aim to create a lively and friendly cultural space primarily dedicated to books. A place where children of all ages are welcomed and helped to not only become friends with books but also with the latest technologies.
To offer children and young people an alternative way to spend their free time
In Costești, a city completely lacking economic opportunities and culturally dormant, children and young people have no alternatives for spending their free time other than a few sports fields. There are no cinemas or theaters, no after-schools or playgrounds for the approximately 1,800 schoolchildren. The local library, located in the Cultural Center, is as unattractive as the name of the building that hosts it: an old, decaying room with 4 computers and a handful of worn-out books. The only school library has no librarian and is very poorly equipped. Lacking parental supervision and alternatives for spending their free time, many schoolchildren spend their time on the street or in the numerous gambling halls in the city.
What Hercularium will include
– Loan and reading room.We will provide children with a rich collection of books and publications in Romanian, English, French, and German. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, travel guides, art albums, maps, and foreign language learning courses will be available for on-site consultation.
– Computer room with internet access.Approximately 5 laptops or desktop computers, connected to the internet, will be available to visitors for educational purposes and research.
– Multimedia room equipped with DVD players, CD players, projectors, tablets and Kindles. We will teach children how to use each of these devices independently. DVDs, CDs and audiobooks will be used exclusively for educational purposes in the library. We will also have a collection of carefully selected educational films.
– Toy playroom equipped with richly illustrated books and many stimulating games and toys for young children (ages 0–6). This space will be particularly useful for children whose parents do not send them to daycare or kindergarten, providing them with important developmental stimuli.
– Event room. This room will host events, exhibitions, workshops, plays, training and parenting courses for the parents in the community. It will be a space for creativity and learning, both for children and parents.
– Book Caravan.Once a week, the Hercules Center’s minibus (a donation from Mercedes Romania) will take books requested by children to the neighborhoods around Costești and neighboring villages, for children who cannot reach the Hercules Center (there are at least 10 km between the city center and the surrounding neighborhoods).
How you can help
– Donate online or donate via bank transfer.We need funds to purchase library resources (books in any format, computers, DVD and CD players, apps), for space renovation (furniture, etc.), for center maintenance, event organization, and the weekly Caravan events.
– Donate books, audio-books, DVDs, CDs, educational resources and any other useful materials for the computer and multimedia rooms. If we receive multiple copies of the same book, we will also equip the School Library in Costești. You can contact us here.
– Become a volunteer.Once we start renovating the library space, we will need passionate people and plenty of help to beautify the space, catalog the received or purchased books, create a digital catalog of the library and organize events for children and parents.
Thank you, dear donors and friends!
What’s the plan?
The project will grow and develop depending on the resources we manage to mobilize from generous donors, partners (e.g., publishing houses), sponsor companies, and their employees. We will start with the renovation of the available space (e.g., purchasing comfortable furniture for young readers) and the acquisition of books. We will continue equipping the computer room and the multimedia room. At the same time, we will begin thinking about training programs for parents and events and workshops for children.
How you can track the project’s progress
Here, on the Hercules Association website, and on Facebook we will post updated information about donations and our plan to open a recreational and educational center for all children from Costești and the surrounding area.
Find out more here about the Hercules Association and its activities in the Costești community here. You can read about our main program, the Hercules Day Center aici.
For more information about how responsible companies can get involved in the project, click – here.
