Abingdon News No.56

12 January 2021 Abingdon News Celebrating 20 Years of the Moldova Partnership Abingdon’s partnership with Agape , a charity based in Moldova working with poor and disadvantaged communities, celebrates its twentieth anniversary this term. It is a partnership that has seen numerous fundraising events organised at school over the years and nearly £85,000 raised to support Agape’s work, but it is a partnership that is about far more than just raising money and which has been of incalculable worth to both sides. Most people in the UK would not be able to place Moldova on a map, and yet well over 150 Abingdon pupils have visited it in recent years and there are many pupils in Moldova who know all about Abingdon School. In 2003 we took a small group of pupils to Moldova to find out more about how our donations were being used by Agape in what was almost certainly the first ever visit by a UK school to the country. One of the highlights of the trip was spending time in some of the local schools, giving the Moldovan children the chance to practise speaking English. A particular memory that stands out is attending a concert at one of these schools that had been put on in our honour and gradually realising as it went on that we would be expected to “perform” something at the end of the concert – a rapidly formulated battleplan led to the Abingdon boys singing the rather eclectic mix of Away in a Manger, God Save the Queen , and Old MacDonald had a Farm (the latter with considerable audience participation for the animal noises)! Since then trips to Moldova have focussed on organising summer camps for children from Ialoveni and the surrounding villages. Abingdon sixth formers have taught English lessons, organised art, drama and music sessions, led film-making and photography workshops, and run lots of sporting activities, even managing to successfully introduce the concept of cricket to Moldova. The benefits to the Moldovan children we have run the camps for and to those families and schools who have benefitted from the financial donations we have made, are obvious, but the benefits for the Abingdon boys have also been considerable. They have, of course, had to develop their communication and leadership skills in order to run a successful activity session with a group of Moldovan children. They have also had to push themselves out of their comfort zones on a regular basis, especially during the annual ritual by which they attempt to dance the Moldovan hora! But it is also the case that many of the boys who have travelled to Moldova have got to know themselves better on the trip and questioned what really matters to them – seeing how generous Moldovan families are with what little they have is a very eye-opening experience. And observations such as a Moldovan boy, so proud of the paper aeroplane that he has made and decorated that he keeps it with him every day for the next week certainly makes you question whether you really need to have the most up to date bit of technological kit. As part of an Abingdon education, we should be encouraging our very fortunate boys to see themselves as people who must try to “make a difference”, both while at school but also in their later lives. The Moldova Project has certainly seen pupils do that for the last 20 years and proven that it is often when we are making a difference to others that we also make a big difference to ourselves. by Adam Jenkins, Master in Charge of the Moldovan Project Attempting to dance the Moldovan Hora