They left early in the morning, by coach, exactly the way you leave on the first day of a real holiday: around 100 children from Ungheni district have set off for Romania, to the ARC camps organised by the Department for Romanians Everywhere. The destinations — Padiș, in Cluj county, and Oglinzi, in Neamț county.
The ARC camps are the programme through which the Romanian state brings, every summer, children from Romanian communities abroad — including from the Republic of Moldova — for a holiday in the country, without the families paying for the stay. For the children from Ungheni it means a few days of mountains, activities and new friends; for the parents, a holiday many could not otherwise afford.
A tradition that repeats
For quite a few children in the district, it is not the first time. In the comments under the departure announcement, parents recount that it is the third year in a row their little ones go to these camps and that the experience has “a major impact” on them — exactly the kind of feedback that explains why, year after year, the lists fill up fast.
The group was accompanied by the local organiser, who publicly thanked the Department for Romanians Everywhere for the opportunity offered to the children from across the Prut.
Why it matters for Ungheni
Beyond the holiday itself, such camps are one of the concrete ways in which the bond between the two banks of the Prut reaches the youngest. A child from Ungheni who spends a week at Padiș or Oglinzi is not just going to the mountains — they come back with an experience, with friends from other places and with the natural feeling that Romania is not “abroad”.
For a community that increasingly sends its children to competitions and exchanges across the Prut, it is one more brick in a relationship that is built, in its best version, from the age of the camp backpack.
The number of children, the destinations and the organiser come from the public announcement by the organiser of the Ungheni-district group, published on Facebook. The recurring nature of the camps emerges from the parents’ comments on the same post.