Save the Children Romania's Halloween Pumpkins Show Data is Scarier Than Ghosts

For Halloween 2020, Save The Children Romania and McCann Bucharest launch Truly Scary, a campaign that tackles the real monsters of Romania’s educational system: the lack of resources for online schooling, poor training of teachers for online schooling, alarming school drop-out and functional illiteracy. The campaign uses real and disturbing data to make the case. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has sped the digitalisation of many business and government sectors, especially where the educational system is concerned. Romania is no exception, but, unfortunately, soon after online schooling started, the big awakening came: The country found a huge gap in educational continuity between rural and urban areas in Romania, with as many as 28% of children not having access to the digital tools needed for homeschooling.

Some of the key facts: 

• 1 out of 2 students joins online classes from a mobile phone
• 28% of students do not have the tools to join home schooling at all
• 3 out of 20 children drop out of school
• 41% of students are functional illiterates
• 43% of the teachers do not have the resources to teach online 

The Truly Scary campaign uses a unique way of communicating this disturbing data the Romanian decision-makers: The data is being carved onto traditional Halloween pumpkins, then they are shipped to authorities, media and influencers. The campaign kicks off a 'trick-or-treat' activation to make the reality of Romania’s educational system less scary.

Anybody can help out and donate here: 

“For this Halloween, the monsters of Romania’s educational system hit harder than any other. These monsters exist and they do not hide under the bed, but turn against us as future adults who didn’t get a chance at a normal life, who become victims of violence or assailants, who become unemployed and dependant on the state again. We hope that people will join this campaign and donate. We hope that the authorities will join this campaign and take the measures necessary to improve the situation”, stated Gabriela Alexandrescu, Save the Children Romania director.