Step 1. From founding idea to finding a location
If you don’t know us yet and want to find out more about our project, read this post.
Dear DooBeeGood supporter,
It’s official — we now have a name! We believe it captures the essence of what we want to do (and sounds a bit like Scooby-Doo). Our mission is to do good through education, making sure that children learn how to be good. DooBeeGood, in the full body and mind sense, is what we’re passionate about.
The founding idea
You may know already, Viktoriia and I live and work together. With the pandemic, we gained more time to discuss our ideas and how we’d like to make an impact.
During one of the many conversations over dinner in the lockdown, we decided we wanted to set up a summer camp for children who normally wouldn’t afford that experience. We couldn’t decide whether to host it in Romania or Ukraine, and as we got closer to the summer, we realised it would still be too risky given the COVID uncertainty.
Fast forward to 2022, there was no decision about which country to host it in. When the war in Ukraine started, the camp idea returned and crystallised — we were going to organise a camp for displaced Ukrainian children in Romania.
Finding a location
Once we decided to do this, we started actively looking for a summer camp location. A few days of intense googling and many calls to private guest houses led us to a website with a list of camp locations accredited by the Ministry of Sport in Romania. As the website was last updated in 2014, we had little hopes about this venture. I called and about a week later we were booked in for a visit to one of their 4 locations in Sibiu county.
We were both in Romania after Viktoriia’s family had left Ukraine, so we got in the car on a gloomy morning after Easter and drove there. We were both so tired from the weeks of intense stress before, but as we got there our faces just lit up. The location we came to see was perfect: beautiful nature and fresh air, bespoke places for activities, a large dining hall. We toured the whole place in pouring rain, hopping with excitement, and made sure to book the place as soon as we were done with our visit.
Finding the location made it all feel real, and we quickly started moving with our fundraising campaign and the paperwork to set up an NGO.
This is just the beginning of our long journey. Stay tuned here to learn more about our adventures in preparing the camp and spread the word about it!
Still hopping around with joy and excitement,
Diana
