Ramona Antonie – The Social Worker of the Year 2017 in the field of disabilities!

An award dedicated to all people with deafblindness in Romania, by our dear colleague, Ramona Antonie, who was awareded the title of Social Worker of the Year 2017 in the Field of Disabilities.

The National Gala of Excellency in Social Work, organized on March 20th at the Romanian Athenaeum, began with many emotions for the Sense International Romania team, who waited with enthusiasm to hear the results for the category dedicated to Social Work in the field of disabilities. At this category, 60 social workers registered from all over the country and after the voting round, 3 of them were selected finalists by a Jury of specialists.

The emotions culminated when hearing her name as a winner of this price which comes after 12 years of hard work for the benefit of children and young people with deafblindness from Romania.

2017 was a challenge for our team and an innovative way to represent deafblindness to the public from 12 towns, where people could experiment in a sensory tent some moments without seeing and hearing. Ramona travelled with the team in 2017 over 3635 kilometres all over Romania with the sensory tent, raised 1247 signatures for the rights of people with deafblindness and the project Sensabilitate appeared in 46 offline and online media.

For sure this award, dedicated to all people with deafblindness from Romania, is a proof of her involvement and dedication in all these years when she developed projects within the foundation, promoted the profession of social work through her activity and proved that people with deafblindness can succeed if they benefit from appropriate services.

Congratulations from all of our hearts, Ramona, and thank you for your devotion! We are so glad to have you with us and thank you for proving what Helen Keller used to say, through your everyday actions: Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much!

Below you can see her speech from the Gala:

Ramona’s speech:

Good evening and thank you so much. I am really nervous. Earlier, I was saying I was not nervous at all, that I would have no problem when and if I get up here. But here I am, very nervous. I want to thank my wonderful colleagues, who supported me to be here and the colleague who insisted that I enter this competition.

It is a titanic work we are doing, at Sense international Romania. We promote the rights of people with multisensory impairments, visual and hearing, that is people with deafblindness.

I will use this opportunity , that I have you all here, all social workers in Romania that are here, to ask you to provide appropriate information and services to these people, because depending on what they receive, the move forward.

It is not by hazard that today, Mr. Vasile Adamescu, a person with deafblindness, completely blind and completely deaf, has launched the second volume of his autobiography.

So, with appropriate services, they can succeed and integrate. And with your help, this can happen.

In fact, I dedicate this award to all people with deafblindness in the country.

Thank you a lot!