Radio România Internațional

Tag: high schools

  • Anti-drug Campaign in Romania

    Anti-drug Campaign in Romania

    ‘Own your emotions, overcome your fears and channel your energy in a constructive way! There are so many healthy alternatives to remain full of energy and ‘cool’ but at the same time self-composed, with your feet on the ground, permanently connected to your objectives and reality!’

    This is in short the message conveyed by the National Anti-drug Agency, which has launched a “Ground’ campaign in several high-schools in Bucharest with a view to proposing surefire ways to manage the emotions teenagers are presently facing.

    The campaign’s message is a strong one: ‘you don’t need to resort to any trick or compromise in order to become a model for the generation you belong to or to reach your potential. It is essential that you accept your imperfections, observe your principles and when you get lost you can ask for help.’

    This message has been conveyed to the young people directly through meetings and workshops in their schools but also by launching a newspaper addressing the Ground generation at the webpage and social network pages devoted to this campaign.

    According to Ramona Dabija, director of the National Anti-drug Agency, besides the risks associated to drug-consumption the young people are also introduced to a series of healthy alternatives available. And those, who have already given in to the temptation of using banned substances, are being reminded that whenever they are overwhelmed or find themselves in risky situations, they can benefit from counseling, which is confidential and free of charge.

    In order to attach more importance to the “Ground” campaign, high-school students have been given the opportunity to interact and learn from the experience of successful Romanian athletes who have achieved remarkable results in their career, being themselves role models of discipline, ambition and healthy lifestyle.

    Among those who interacted with the students was Larisa Iordache, 16 times gold medalist in European Gymnastics Championships, fencer Ana Maria Brânză, multiple medalist in the Olympics, three times world champion and seven times European Champion, rower Ancuţa Bodnar – gold medalist in Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, footballers Florin Gardoş and Ionel Dănciulescu or basketball player, Virgil Stănescu.

    Swimmer David Popovici, the year’s champion and the idol of his generation, has decided to get involved through an interview published in the ʺGroundʺ newspaper or on the webpage of the aforementioned campaign.

    It’s impossible to fathom the real dimensions of drug consumption in Romania and although statistics cannot accurately describe the reality, one thing is for sure – the situation has deteriorated in the past years and that prompted both experts and authorities to sound the alarm and find ways of curbing the phenomenon.

    On 24 November, concurrently with the first round of the presidential election, Bucharest will also be seeing a local referendum and one of the questions will be focusing on the involvement of the city halls in the prevention of drug consumption in schools and high-schools in Bucharest.

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  • Ukraine and education in the language of ethnic minorities

    Ukraine and education in the language of ethnic minorities

    Amidst recent diplomatic tensions between Romania and Hungary, there are few issues on which the foreign ministers of these two countries still agree. However, Teodor Melescanu and Peter Szijjarto, alongside their counterparts from Bulgaria, Ekaterina Zakharieva, and Greece, Nikos Kotzias, sent a common letter to the Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland, and the High Commissioner on National Minorities Lamberto Zannier, expressing their concern and profound regret over the new education law passed by Ukraine’s Parliament.



    This common move reflects the interest of the signatory countries in the protection of the rights of ethnic minorities. They call on the Ukrainian authorities to identify concrete measures in this regard, in the spirit of cooperation and in strict compliance with the relevant international norms and standards.



    The law in question, which only needs to be signed by president Petro Poroshenko to come into force, drastically restricts access to education in the mother tongue for the many ethnic communities in Ukraine, including Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Greek and Polish.



    The law stipulates that teaching in high schools and universities is to be made in Ukrainian, while teaching in the language of ethnic minorities can only be provided in nursery and primary schools. Analysts say that, amidst the open conflict with Moscow, the move of the Kiev authorities in fact targets the millions of ethnic Russians in the east and south of Ukraine, with the other ethnic communities being collateral damage.



    The Romanian community is the second largest in Ukraine after the Russian one. Almost half a million ethnic Romanians live in the neighbouring country, mostly in the Romanian territories annexed by the former Soviet Union in 1940 through an ultimatum and inherited by Ukraine as successor state in 1991.



    On their behalf, the MP Grigore Timis and two of his colleagues in the Ukrainian Parliament of Hungarian and Bulgarian origin called on president Poroshenko not to sign this law that would see Ukrainian citizens “lose their right to choose freely the language in their wish to study”.



    Earlier, both the foreign ministry in Bucharest and the ministry for Romanians abroad had voiced their discontent with the provisions of the law. The Liberal leader Ludovic Orban, in opposition, has criticised the delayed response of the Romanian authorities and has requested the resignation of the respective minister, Andreea Pastarnac, while the People’s Movement party has called for an emergency meeting of the Romanian-Ukrainian mixed presidential committee to persuade Kiev to rethink the law.