History & Prospectus

ROADS International, Inc. was founded in July 2000 after taking part in two service trips to Romania sponsored by Duke University.

In the summer of 1999, a group of students from Duke spent ten days living and working in Bucharest, Romania. Eight students were assigned to work at sites throughout Bucharest, including an orphanage, an AIDS Hospital, and a drop-in center for street children.

In May of 2000, the second team lived and worked for three weeks in Oituz, a small farming village with a population of approximately 800 and an average monthly salary of less than $100 per household. Over the course of the trip, the group of volunteers spent time working in the fields, renovating the village church, and interacting with Romanian children and teenagers.

During that trip in 2000, we held a community meeting with the teenagers in Oituz. The mood in the meeting room was cheerful and relaxed as the Romanian and American students got to know each other, asking questions back and forth. Then I very naïvely asked the question, "How many of you want to live here when you grow up?" A shocking silence suddenly fell over the room, broken only by a few incredulous giggles. Finally, a small timid voice from the back of the room said, "None of us want to stay here. But there is no other way." The girl's response was supported by nods around the room, while many continued to stare blankly at the floor. Finally, a few brave individuals began to explain their situation to us: "Without money, it is impossible to go to college. Many of us can barely afford the bus fare to travel to town everyday to get to the high school. Nobody from Oituz has ever gone to college. It is even impossible for us to have enough money to go away to look for work. None of us want to stay here, but we all know that we will."

Then I asked, "How many of you would like to go to college?" Every Romanian student raised his or her hand.

Despite the country's immense poverty, we were greatly touched by the warmth and generosity of the Romanian people. We also became acutely aware of the complete lack of morale among the young people with regards to their futures and vocations.

In July 2000, upon our return from the second trip, Nicholas Durham and I joined forces to form ROADS in order to provide scholarships to enable academically gifted students from rural Romania to attend Romanian universities. Since then, we have awarded our first scholarships to students from Oituz - the village where we lived and worked. We have collaborated with Sister Mary Murphy of Bucharest, Romania in order to select the scholarship recipients and to monitor their progress.

ROADS is able to support the educational costs of a Romanian student for only 50 U.S. dollars per month. As our funding continues to grow, we intend to make this scholarship fund available to students from other villages in rural Romania who demonstrate academic promise, financial need, and high moral character.

ROADS International, Inc. is a non-religious, volunteer-driven organization and is not affiliated with Duke University. It is our mission to open the doors of education for Romanian young people.

Sincerely,

Katherine J. Van Loon
Co-Founder and Director