SANPAUL CONSTRUCTION APPRENTICESHIP & LYDIA PROJECT

Sanpaul is a small Roma village situated around 21km North-West of the city of Cluj-Napoca in Romania. We love being here, and over the past 2 years, we have enjoyed building relationships with the men, women and children in this Roma community, and also in the surrounding Romanian villages. This is a very special place which has captivated our thoughts, fuelled our prayers, and completely captured our hearts.

A WORK IN PROGRESS

A message from Mandy Simpson.
Founder and Director of Empower International.

Sanpaul is a new location for us at Empower International, and it is an immense privilege to be here. Empower Romania originally launched on the 6th October 2014 in a Roma village close to the city of Oradea, and in a 3 year period, we experienced rapid growth and development in our skills training apprenticeships for both men and women, trapped in poverty cycles with minimal hope or opportunity of escaping. The results were amazing, so many lives changing as people began to invest in their future, for themselves, and for their children. After Empower Romania was established in this community, it was handed over to be continued by a local charity, and it was during the transition period that a new door opened before us. Project number 2 was birthed when a Romanian Pastor that I met in a church in Australia, introduced us to this new location of Sanpaul, and a wonderful charity to form a partnership with.

The Corabia Foundation was set up in 2005 primarily to work with children and teenagers, to share the good news of Jesus in both word and action, and to show them an alternative way to live, through practical mentoring and spiritual discipleship. The Corabia Foundation and Empower International share a similar vision to empower the community of Sanpaul with practical skills to help them to become employable. Our heart and passion is to help people to help themselves.

In 2018 we launched our Empower Romania Sanpaul construction training apprenticeship, and have begun creating a cottage industry for the women in the community, called the Lydia Project. The women are working on a beautiful collection of hand-embroidered greetings cards, these are available to purchase, please enquire for details.

Empower International is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of the people of Sanpaul. The people live in impoverished conditions and posting evidence of this would leverage a call for support, however all media shared on this site is and will always be with the consent of the people.

We are so excited for what is already happening in 2019. Our focus at the moment is with the women in the Lydia Project. Plans to develop some land with a new set of apprentices is currently on hold whilst we await an opportunity to proceed with this. There are some new and exciting plans for the autumn, watch this space...

...thankyou for sharing this journey with us.

Mandy

JOIN US

VISIT US

Do you have a heart for mission? Skills in administration? Healthcare? Children's work? Sports, Music, Drama?
Construction? Carpentry?
Sewing? Embroidery?

Whatever you have to offer we would love for you to come and join us for a short term mission trip or speak to us about an internship.

APPRENTICESHIP

Empower Romania offers 12 month apprenticeships in construction and carpentry work to the right candidates. We can only do this with the help of sponsors who will support them during their training.

All of our candidates are semi-literate, with minimal education and no viable opportunities to learn skills that would enable them to become employable.

Can you help support our young men to learn these valuable skills?

THE LYDIA PROJECT

This cottage industry and training programme specialises in hand-embroidered greetings cards and sewing products. The Lydia Project provides a safe environment for women to come together to enjoy a mutual support network, an opportunity to learn employable skills as well as providing a way to generate much needed income.