The Ambassador of the United Kingdom in Moldova, John Beyer, and the Deputy Minister of Education and Youth, Valentin Crudu, awarded Friday, December 14, prizes to groups of children from both ordinary and residential schools who participated together in a drawing contest. The national children’s paining competition was held in November with the aim to promote social inclusion of children, teenagers and adults from rural and urban residential and social protection institutions as part of the National Strategy for Community Action. As Valentin Crudu said, it is very important today for the whole country to acknowledge the fact that the children from these institutions also need to be integrated into the society. According to him, all the recent activities, like visits of institutionalised children to ordinary schools, sports events and joint cultural activities have brought good results. “It is undoubtedly a noble cause. Still, it remains to have everyone’s attitude changed towards the future of these children”, the deputy minister said. 34 drawings made in such a partnership have been selected from several hundreds of entries submitted by children from across the country. The value of the prizes totalled about 2,000 euros. The prizes were offered by the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG) in Moldova, co-chaired by PM Vasile Tarlev and Baroness Emma Nicholson, a Member of the European Parliament. CHLG is working to help improve the lives of thousands of children and strengthen families. Much of this work focuses on building up social work support and national fostering and adoption programmes so that children in big institutions, who are often raised in unacceptable conditions, can instead grow up within loving families in Moldova.