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:: Thank you for
visiting the website of The Care Project of Romania.org
We at www.sugipula.ro
are very often contacted by visitors of our website, who are already aware of
the immense problems children in Romania are facing. These dear
visitors are willing to help. For this reason we set up the website you are
just seeing, outlining the situation and giving you the occasion to help.
The Street
Children in Romania
 There are no accurate figures on
the number of street children in Romania,
but it is estimated that only in the capital of Bucharest
alone, there are between three and five thousand children living on the
streets and over nine thousand in the entire Romania. As Romania's notorious institutions
are being closed down, the numbers are on the increase.
Some of the children are
as young as four or five years old, though the majority are
adolescents.
Most of the children have fled state-run institutions or orphanages because
of the poor conditions there or because they were being abused by other
children or the staff. The rest of Romania's street children have fled
broken homes or abusive and poor parents.
On the streets, the children earn money by begging, stealing, doing
menial tasks or prostitution. They live in small metal containers or card
boxes (1 metre by 1.5 metres)
which line some of the sidewalks in Bucharest,
in one of the city's main train stations, the underground or the sewers.
 
Because Romanian
orphanages only accept children up to eighteen and few state programs help
young adults, older children often find themselves thrown back on the street.
One girl said she spent most of her life in an orphanage after her
impoverished family abandoned her at birth. When she turned eighteen, she was
told she must leave. "We grew up and they kicked us out!"
About www.sugipula.ro Care Project
We raise funds for a
private safe house for homeless children in south east of Romania. Children are provided
there with refuge, medical care, food, comfort and education.
Links are made to
reunite the children with their families or alternatively to find good foster
homes. A successful outcome for each child depends on long term support and
counseling to families and foster careers.
 Our teams work on the streets
together with the Department of Child Protection in an outreach program. It
identifies homeless children very early in their life on the street before
they succumb to the inevitable risks of substance abuse and criminality.
Though we are a totally
private project, we have full support of the Government of Romania (e.g.
National Authority for Child Protection and Adoption).
We offer food,
friendship and support to each child before they are admitted to our refuge.
We also provide
"drop-in" day care facilities for children who do not wish to be
admitted so that they still have access to medical care, showers, food and support services.
The
project also delivers
- A back-to-school program via
special literacy classes (where needs be)
- An annual summer camp in the
country or by the sea
- Weekly arts and music
therapy
- Specialist drama and
conflict resolution therapy sessions by a resident psychologist and
visiting specialists
- Sports activities via a
local high school sports initiative
- Long-term follow-up where
children have been reunited with their families
- Drop-in support care to
adolescents who have left our safe house and become independent
- An excellent record in
campaigning with the state and other NGO’s for good services and
reintegration into school and the community for former street children
Our project offers solutions that are sensitive to each child's
needs and wishes - whether this be reintegration
with their family, fostering, adoption or long term care with us.
 Please help!
Donations are the
quickest and simplest way to give your support.
All of our work targets
the poorest of the poor, the homeless children of Romania.
Here are some examples
of the good your money can do:
- 40,-Euros
may not buy a lot on it's own - but when added
to our crisis fund for the destitute can have a huge impact.
- 80,-
Euros
maintains vital independence for an ill person in need by providing
nursing and care in their own home.
- 200,-
Euros
funds a "Back to School Pack" (haircut, clothing, footwear,schoolbag and materials), enabling a former
street child to start a new life with dignity.
- 400,- Euros
is the cost of a week's food for 20 children rescued from the streets
and sewers, making a fresh start in our refuge for former street
children.
- 600,-
Euros
can provide a sustainable master plan to rescue a family from the
poverty trap and get the children back to school.
Any donation you could
give, large or small, will make a real difference to a child in need in Romania.
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You can also give a
modest amount on a regular basis. Even a fraction of the price of your daily
newspaper could make a huge difference to many children
lives in Romania.
There are two good reasons for this:
- We want to ensure a
long-term future for our Romanian friends.
- Giving regularly also means
the charity could increase the value of your gift by nearly one third at
no extra cost to you. This is because the most western countries revenue
services will usually refund the tax you have already paid on your
donations.
We have chosen Pay Pal
to securely and efficiently process your donation. Founded in 1998, PayPal, an eBay Company, enables any individual or
business with an email address to securely, easily and quickly send payments
online. PayPal's service builds on the existing
financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards and utilizes the
world's most advanced proprietary fraud prevention systems to create a safe,
global, real-time payment solution.
PayPal has quickly become a global leader in online
payment solutions with over 31 million account members worldwide.
PayPal has received close to 20 awards for
technical excellence from the Internet industry and the business community at
large - most recently the 2003 Webby Award for Best Finance Site and the 2003
Webby People's Voice Award for Best Finance Site.
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We guarantee that 100%
of any donation from a member of the public goes directly to Romania,
because our administration costs are funded separately. You can
see here what we do with the money.
If you have questions about The Care
Project of sugipula.com, please click here to contact us...
Why Romania still
needs our help
Romania continues to suffer badly after a
legacy of 40 years of severe communism. Civil society and social services
have had to be reconstructed from scratch.
Subsequent fashionable -
but dubious - western “market led” reforms by the likes of the
World Bank have left most of the population 8 times poorer than 10 years ago. A tiny fraction has
thrived. But that’s all.
An astonishing 44% of Romanians are now reportedly living in
poverty. (Masca cu argila rosie)
The World Bank in 2004
places Romania just above Namibia and Columbia in its economic indicators report.
Every 5th Romanian
Child is Exploited: some 900,000 of the approximately 5 million children of Romania
are forced to work. Approximately 300,000 (of these) are forced to perform
extremely hard manual labour (See
note 2)
The north east of Romania - where we have many of our
community-based projects - was recently described as "the absolute poverty pole of Europe" – (See
note 3)
95% of Romanian households
in some parts of the north east have no running water, 10% cannot afford to
connect to the electricity supply and there are no social services - other
than those we provide - for an area of 24,000 people.
One doctor we know of has
to care for 16 villages and a population of thousands (Vultureni Communa, Bacau County).
With 18 deaths per 1,000 babies born
alive, Romania has the 3rd
highest infant mortality rate in Europe after Albania
(37) and Ukraine
(21).
What we are doing
in the face of this
There has been no
precedent for care of the disabled, sick and elderly. Local communities and
even the authorities need to be shown
how it can be done.
Our models of care of
children, elderly and other needy groups act as seed-corn projects for the local
communities and the authorities to develop their own programmes.
Part of what we do with
these model projects
is “dare to fail”.
This is something that isn’t that easy to do for a Romanian bureaucrat.
But when they see how we have tried and tested a social project that brings real solutions to problems in their
area, they have been able to adopt it with confidence.
They then secure funding
from the Government. We move on to the next thing.
If we hadn’t done it
on the ground they
would have been stuck with an unworkable plan foisted on them by some western
consultant who knows nothing of the
realities of life on the ground but everything about
implementing unworkable plans - for which others will get the blame when they
invariably fail..
Sadly the cameras have
long since left Romania's
notorious institutions and it is failing to attract the international support
it needs to reform. This is doubly
sad considering the time is now ripe for real change.
A new generation of younger Romanians
are poised to
get involved at senior level in the country’s problems. We’re
still there with a dwindling number of other foreign charities but we need your help for what should
be the final push towards self-sufficiency and the sustainable care of the
less fortunate in Romania.
Note 1
Born two years ago, under
the orders of the Government, the Anti Poverty Commission (CASPIS) presented
to the government its first report in 2004.
The Romanian population
over the past ten years has decreased from around 23,000,000 to c.
21,000,000. The decrease is said to be due to migration of the workforce.
According to the CASPIS
study, some 6.5 million Romanians live in poverty, of whom 2.4 million live in extreme poverty
and another 1.2 million cannot afford
basic food rations.
The data suggests a Romania filled with people that
live from one day to another. It must be emphasised
that extreme poverty is very widespread.
Note 2
"Every 5th
Romanian Child is Exploited: some 900,000 of the approximately 5 million children of Romania
are forced to work. Approximately 300,000 (of
these) are forced to perform extremely hard manual labour .
Most of them are illiterate as they were withdrawn from school in order to be
able to 'do their job'.
About 89% of the exploited
children live in rural environments. Poverty was deemed as the main cause of this
situation."
Study by UNICEF, Ministry of Labour Romania
and the Bureau of
International Labour
Affairs May 2004
Note 3
Significantly, over two
thirds of the paupers live in rural areas, where the poverty risk is 2.3
times higher than in urban areas. Geographically speaking, 25% of Romania's paupers live in the north eastern province of Moldova, where the poverty risk is
43%. Generally speaking 20% of the paupers are farmers, while another 20% are
pensioners.
The most affected
individuals are usually children
or aged 15 - 24 (40%), followed by farmers (20%), retired personnel (20%),
employees (10%) and unemployed (9%).
Recent
socio-economic studies
"Romania has the lowest purchasing power in Europe - 1/7 of the European average. . Zurich, London, Luxembourg and Oslo
have the highest purchasing power in Europe.
At the opposite end are 8 Romanian regions and 2 Bulgarian regions. The
absolute poverty pole is in North Eastern Romania" [2]
Austrian press agency
APA on a study by Consodata marketing(Germany) and RegioData
Research (Austria)
April 2004
"
With 18 deaths
per 1,000 babies born alive, Romania
has the 3rd highest infant mortality rate in Europe after Albania (37) and Ukraine (21) . rural areas are
the most affected" [3]
Mother and Child Institute, Bucharest April 2004
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Links:
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