The village Schinoasa of Calarasi district, which is inhabited mainly by Romani people, does not have a school, a kindergarten, a church, a mayor’s office or at least a shop. With the support of the Education Ministry and UNICEF, a community center for children of preschool age was set up in the village in 2011, but only 10 of the 22 children enrolled attend it, Info-Prim Neo reports. Early education programs coordinator at UNICEF Larisa Vartosu said that Schinoasa hasn’t had a kindergarten for 15 years and the opened community center is designed to prepare Roma children for school. “We set up a very good community center, with toys and books. At the beginning, all the parents were delighted, but, for a child to benefit from an early education program, he must attend the center daily. The children there may go one day and be absent the next day. The reasons invoked by the parents are strange. Some of them said that they didn’t have water to wash the child or they left him with somebody as they had to go somewhere outside the village,” she stated. None of the parents of the children who do not attend the community center completed four grades. “All those to whom I talked admitted that they can write and read with difficulty. The parents’ knowledge is very poor and they need to be trained. The early education programs for the Roma children are very important, but there should be in parallel parent programs for the children’s parents so that they realize the importance of early education” said the programs coordinator. Iacob Proscurov, mayor of Tibirica commune, which forms part of Schinoasa, said the community center in Schinoasa employs an educator from Tibirica, but the attendances there are very low. Only 10 of the 22 children aged between 3 and 6 attend the center. The mayor said that 53 children from Schinoasa go to the school in Tibirica. Some of the children go abroad with their parents to work. Schinoasa has about 300 Roma inhabitants, about 100 of whom are children. According to UNDP, approximately one third of the Roma population in Moldova forms part of the category of most poor people, while 5 Romanies in 10 live in conditions of extreme poverty.