Start asking what your teachers do during the summer. Just try it out. You may find out that they go skydiving or are wilderness explorers or, in the case of English teacher Janet Kelly, run a summer camp in the mountains of Transylvania.
Since 2022, Kelley and her husband, Albert-László Barabási, have run a week-long camp in a Hungarian-speaking part of Romania called Transylvania for underprivileged and orphaned children. Around 15 children join the camp each year, as well as two of Kelley’s own children and other volunteers. They do a range of activities, from learning English and playing Bingo, to swimming, hiking and roasting marshmallows for s’mores.
According to Kelley, Romania has had a long history of children in orphanages, and today there are still many children in foster care. Kelley and Albert-László Barabási got involved with theSaint Francis Foundation, a Catholic organization in Romania that runs a foster care program where children are put in a home with a family who takes care of them and sends them to school.
“[The parents] haven’t given up custody, but they agree that the kids live in this system,” Kelley said. “But during the summer, the kids who aren’t able to go back to their parents have nothing to do. They’re just hanging around the house all day long. So our friend said it would be great if we would come and do a camp for those kids.”
Kelley said a lot of the camp is spending time with one another doing fun activities, some of which help the kids learn English.
“We do crafts and we tie-dye T-shirts, which is a big mess, but wonderful. And we do collages,” Kelly said. “The kids really loved bingo, which I would not have guessed. So we played a lot of bingo, which we did in English. You had to understand what the number and the letter was to win bingo.”
Junior Iza Barabási, Kelley’s daughter, attends the camp as a counselor and also for fun. She is fluent in Hungarian and helps with some English-based activities.
“I think it’s a great way to learn. We try to teach them English. We are like, ‘You can have a chocolate, but only if you ask for it in English.’ They get some English vocabulary out of it, and it’s just fun most of the time,” Iza Barabási said.
Albert-László Barabási, a physics professor at Northeastern, said they have seen many children return year after year, and the community has felt like an extended family that they get to see every summer.
“It was really touching to learn the stories of these children and understand where they are with their life and create an environment that returns every year for them,” Albert-László Barabási said. “We didn’t imagine that we would be working with the same group of people from year to year, but that has been what has happened.”
Lisa Nóvé is Kelley’s friend from when Kelley lived in Budapest, and she teaches English to students in Hungary. When Kelley asked if she would like to volunteer, Nóvé said she was very enthusiastic.
“It was really rewarding on so many levels, because of the kids, because of the community, because of the surrounding,” Nóvé said. “It was really just amazing how it all kind of came together.”
An activity that they make sure to include each year is a hike. Albert-László Barabási said this is often one of the children’s favorite activities and one that the children typically are not able to do outside of the camp.
“These children live in the mountains, but they don’t hike. And they don’t hike because in order to hike you have to have somebody take you. You need to have the preparation, you need to have the desire and the know-how,” Albert-László Barabási said. “Hiking seems like cheap entertainment, but it really requires lots of resources and planning, which is what they don’t have access to.”
Nóvé said Kelley was adamant about creating space for all of the kids. She always allowed the children to input their ideas in order to make it fun for all of them.
“Those kids love her; they love the camp,” Nóvé said. “They’re so grateful, not just the kids, but I also think that the people who are working around there really appreciate that someone is taking the time to really try to make these kids’ summers better and give them a proper summer camp experience.”
