Eric and I are hon­ored that Bulldozer’s Big Day was select­ed to be dis­trib­uted to at-risk chil­dren through­out Roma­nia. Trans­lat­ed into Roman­ian, the book takes on a dif­fer­ent sig­nif­i­cance in its new role as ambas­sador for education.

Here’s the sto­ry, pre­sent­ed as Leslie Hawke wrote it, for those of you who might like to found a pro­gram like this, which is high­ly successful!

“In 2004, Peace Corps vol­un­teer Leslie Hawke and Roman­ian edu­ca­tor Maria Ghe­o­rghiu co-found­ed Aso­ci­a­tia Ovid­i­uRo, a non-gov­er­men­tal office, in Romania.

“Today Ovid­i­uRo’s focus is on get­ting chil­dren at high risk of drop­ping out of school into preschool pro­grams from the age of 3. See our web­site: www.ovid.ro.  A key ele­ment of our preschool-pro­mo­tion strat­e­gy (offer­ing $12 a month in food coupons if impov­er­ished par­ents bring their chil­dren to preschool/kindergarten every day) became nation­al­ly fund­ed by the Roman­ian gov­ern­ment in 2016 as a result of OvidiuRo’s suc­cess in rais­ing atten­dance in 45 com­mu­ni­ties.  The Roman­ian gov­ern­ment now funds the food coupon com­po­nent for ALL chil­dren liv­ing in pover­ty (i.e., all chil­dren between ages 3–5 with child wel­fare allowances). Thus, the pro­gram jumped from 2500 chil­dren to poten­tial­ly 110,000 in one fell swoop in 2016. How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment did not fund or plan any infor­ma­tion­al or imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy – so the job of encour­ag­ing poor par­ents to reg­is­ter their chil­dren for preschool fell to us. And that’s how OvidiuRo’s “Read Aloud Car­a­van” was born:

“Through OvidiuRo’s “Read Aloud” Car­a­vans (made pos­si­ble by the Euro­pean mega­s­tore chain, Car­refour) our team stops in Roma set­tle­ments and iso­lat­ed rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, gath­ers togeth­er the young­sters (and their par­ents) and reads aloud from a “Big Book.” Then we give each child a pic­ture book and a banana, and encour­age the par­ents to reg­is­ter their chil­dren for ‘gra­dini­ta’ AND to read to, or, since many of the par­ents are illit­er­ate, at least look through the pic­ture book with their young chil­dren at home. I think of us as the Roman­ian John­ny Apple­seed of pic­ture books.

“And the response – from teach­ers, par­ents, chil­dren, and even may­ors and school super­in­ten­dents – has been extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pos­i­tive!  It is par­tic­u­lar­ly reward­ing to see the rapt look on the faces of chil­dren who have lit­er­al­ly nev­er been read to or seen a pic­ture book before. And the num­ber of Roma chil­dren attend­ing gra­dini­ta has grown dramatically!”

Bulldozer’s Big Day is their choice for the newest book to become part of the pro­gram. To date Ovid­i­uRo has received roy­al­ty-free per­mis­sion to trans­late and reprint the fol­low­ing titles:

• Good Enough to Eat by Lizzy Rock­well (Harper­Collins)
• Eat Lots of Col­ors by Helen Marstiller (Cre­ate­Space)
• Lit­tle Blue Truck by Alice Scher­tle (H‑M Harcourt)
• Sil­ly Sal­ly by Audrey Wood (H‑M Harcourt)
• Up, Down & Around by Kather­ine Ayres (Can­dlewick)
• Over in the Mead­ow by Louise Voce (Can­dlewick)

“Pro­gram Details:

1. Trans­late and print a Big Book ver­sion of Bull­doz­er’s Big Day here in Roma­nia to give to preschool teachers.
2. Trans­late and reprint small paper­back copies to give to chil­dren who lit­er­al­ly have NO books or even news­pa­pers in their homes.
3. Dis­trib­ute copies free-of-charge to par­ents who shop in Dede­man, a large DYI home improve­ment chain, found­ed, owned and oper­at­ed by the Paval fam­i­ly (www.dedeman.ro) This encour­ages Roman­ian par­ents who walk through the doors of any of Dedeman’s 47 out­lets, to reg­u­lar­ly read with their preschool age chil­dren. Dede­man has been a major spon­sor of OvidiuRo’s work from the begin­ning and is a high­ly respect­ed Roman­ian-owned business.

“We believe that Bull­doz­er’s Big Day serves two high­ly ‘con­struc­tive’ purposes:

1. It holds an obvi­ous appeal to dads and
2. Con­struc­tion is one of the few adult jobs that Roma chil­dren are per­son­al­ly famil­iar with and exposed to.

“The books would be dis­trib­uted for free and not sold through the trade or any oth­er chan­nel. We would trans­late and pre­pare the text plate files for print­ing and cov­er all costs of print­ing the books in Romanian.”

Inspir­ing, isn’t it? Eric and I will be trav­el­ing in Roma­nia ear­ly next year. We feel lucky to be able to see the effect our lit­tle Bull­doz­er is hav­ing on Roma chil­dren through­out the country.