TEECH un-officially started in 1998 when a group of people who worked together at BT took up the challenge from a work colleague to help repair two hospitals in Bucharest, Romania's capital. About 50 volunteers under the banner of BTL Aid spent a two week period in August and set about painting, plastering, adding lighting and generally making the two hospitals a cleaner, safer and brighter place.

Flushed with the success of this trip but seeing the need to be more structured, we organised ourselves into a proper registered charity and Telecoms Eastern European Challenge was born (TEECH for short). We kept "Telecom's" in our name as we continue to receive generous sponsorship from BT and many of our volunteers still work for the company although we remain a non-BT organisation and totally independent. 

Every year the TEECH trustees visit possible projects and decide which would best benefit from our help and how we can make them self sufficient (our ultimate goal) a team of approx 30-40 volunteers armed with tools and donations endeavour to complete the tasks.

TEECH volunteers will travel for 3 days and nights to reach Falesti on the 14th - 28th August. TEECH welcomes new and existing volunteers (click here to view invite ) to join them on the trip this year together with a minimum of £500 in fundraising of which approx £200 covers expenses like insurance of the volunteer, travel by coach, accommodation and food (whilst on location only). 

Last year, we had to postpone our planned trip to a special needs school in Albineti and an orphanage in Falesti (Moldova) due the swine flu and we have recently received the sad news that the school is due to close (the orphans will be relocated to the large orphanage in Falesti). Not wanting to let the orphans down a 2nd time, with advice from our contact in Moldova, TEECH are now focusing our efforts to help out with some desperately needed repair work at the summer camp where the orphans will be staying over the summer along with our much need aid drops to various other orphanages and schools, hospitals and old people homes in the area.

 The summer camp has no running water so this will be TEECH volunteers primary mission as we feel this request is of upmost priority.  This change of plan will mean spending a lot of time with up to 50 orphans who will no doubt want to help us whilst we dig trenches to run water from the local well to the camp so that toilets and sinks etc can be installed.  Other repair work, decorating, cleaning, cooking etc.. is needed at the camp so every volunteer will be found a role. More information will be made available shortly. 

TEECH encourages its volunteers to raise money to go towards paying for their trip, holding events such as a Masquerade Ball & Fancy Dress Disco's and creating Justgiving donation pages are a great way to cover this cost .

TEECH volunteers also spend the rest of the year collecting donated items (new and used) and acquiring items which have been requested for the project (wishlist).

Our members are all unpaid volunteers so 100% of received donations go to the daily runnings of the charity and the projects we support.

Help support TEECH and the work we do by DONATING via JustGiving - Quick, Easy Credit/Debit card payment. Please help us continue making a difference and DONATE or joining our charity.