#IAmHereForTheChildrenFromUkraineOrphanages

In the middle of the fighting, there were approximately 100,000 children in Ukraine orphanages. Some of them have already arrived in Romania, others will arrive in the following months. They are our priority during this period of time:

During March and April 2022, we supported 230 Ukrainian children. Once they arrived in Romania, they were taken over by the Child Protection Department from Bucharest, Iași, Prahova and Brașov counties.

In the same period of time we helped more than 1,000 Ukrainian children and adults sheltered in the emergency reception centers for refugees, supporting them with: beds, mattresses, bedding, blankets, daily warm meals, we made sure we had on going presence at the borders from Sighet and Siret in the Blue Dot Centers supporting the refugees with whatever they needed, we payed for accommodation and transportation outside Romania and during the first week of war we sent medicine, medical supplies and kits, 1,4 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as mattresses and sleeping bags to Ukraine through the Sighet border.

During the first weeks of war we offered financial, logistical and human support totalizing over 100,000 Euros. Because our heart and yours as well is big enough to comprise both our vulnerable children and theirs.

Thank you all: UiPath Foundation, NN Romania, Fondation de France, Banca Transilvania, Alliance Healthcare, JYSK, Think Human Foundation, Webhelp Romania, TDCX, Carl von Linde Foundation.

Dignity cannot be regained from one day to another.

The fight against poverty is actually the fight for dignity and it has to be constant; it is a long process that needs supported programmes. In other words: ”one swallow doesn’t make a summer”. Nor a sporadic help. The support that changes lives is constant, targeted, offered from the heart.

In 2021, our priority remained the closure of the orphanages.

You cannot ask a child to keep his head up when the sadness is overwhelming and the humiliation lowered his shoulders for days, months and years in a row. At the same time, you cannot ask him to walk in front of the row when the lack of a family and disorientation are pulling him back all the time. Orphanages have a negative impact upon children’s physical, social, and intellectual development.

Without a constant and structured support, without a home that can offer him dignity, privacy, independence, the poor or alone and abandoned child will be the adult friend of crime, indifference and human degradation.

It is difficult to imagine what these children are going through. But there are emotions that you are familiar with. If you have ever experienced the fear of loss or abandonment, you know what is there, in the heart of the children from orphanages, day after day.

In 2021:

• We closed down 3 orphanages in Bucharest, District 4 (Robin Hood), Neamț county (“Elena Doamna” institution), Bihor county (Institution no. 2, Oradea town);
• 128 children left the orphanages. 65 of them returned home to their parents or grandparents;
• We opened 4 family type homes in Bucharest, Neamț, Oradea and Sibiu counties. 48 children are now regaining their dignity through independence and autonomy: they are learning to cook, to wash their clothes, to take care of their room, spend a birthday just like in a real family; they are watching movies in the living room, are preparing the Easter eggs together or making Christmas cookies. In other words, they have access to normality.

We thank our partners: Kaufland Romania, LPP Fashion Romania, Association of Real Estate Investors, JYSK, Carl von Linde Foundation, Holcim Romania, Alliance Healthcare.

Dignity needs clothes, a warm meal and a home.
In 2021, we helped 1,779 children to remain at home.

We all know what poverty means. However, there is extreme poverty, a threshold beyond which people alienate their soul and integrity and children risk to be separated from their parents.

On average, a child who enters an institution will remain there for about 8 years; their reintegration process is difficult. If poverty was the cause for this separation, the parents hardly manage to overcome their huge challenges in order to prove they can provide the child with decent living conditions. In many cases, a rehabilitated home, one that is renovated and equipped with furniture, can bring the children back home.

In 2021, we helped 1,779 children to remain at home and this would not have happened without your help!

For all the positive stories we thank you and our partners: ProTV, Genpact, Kaufland Romania, Alliance Healthcare, World Bank, Vodafone Foundation, Banca Transilvania, Terapia, Pepco, Fildas Trading, B&B Collection, Synevo, Coca Cola, Janssen Romania, Collonade Insurance, Strauss Romania, Samsung Electronics.

Dignity requires equal opportunities.
Only after you know “What will you eat and where will you sleep?” you can have an answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

You cannot know “What do you want to do in life?” or “What are you good at?” or at least “Would you manage?” if the questions you always had to find answers to were completely different.

When faced with financial issues or abandonment, a child learns to survive instead of learning what changes to make in order to find a good path in life.

At the age of 18, when they suddenly have to become adults, they need to leave the child protection system well-enough equipped: they need to be resilient, perseverant, to create and have role models, to build a CV, to know how to answer a job interview, to know how to ask questions or how to make requests, to be disciplined and so on. This is where we come in:

We supported 137 young adults to be part of a society, instead of merely surviving in it.

We helped with material support: paying for rent and utilities, covering basic needs (such as food or hygiene, clothing, footwear, dental interventions), providing recommendations to find employment, training sessions and psychological support and specialized counselling in order to create the basis for a successful integration on the labour market and in the community.

Team Hope Partners: Kaufland Romania, Genpact, JYSK, LPP Fashion România, Mazars, Strauss Romania, Softelligence, Emia, COS, Turbomecanica, RSM.

Each of us has a story, each of us overcomes challenges. With that in mind, 14 youngsters who are preparing to leave the child protection system participated in a camp in Șuior, Maramureș county, in August 2021. It was a week in which they met different people who succeeded in life, but their success did not come easily. They made the children understand that not everyone has it easy, that negative emotions are normal and we need to accept and understand them.

Thank you: NN Romania, Kaufland Romania, Think Huma Foundation, Webhelp Romania, LPP Fashion Romania.

We are building the first integrated community centre in Codlea, Brașov County.
Because people need acceptance and inclusion, not just money.

The fight against poverty does not happen every once in a while, it is a constant process that needs to be consolidated by education and inclusion at all times. This is why Hope and Homes for Children is building the first community centre in Codlea, in Mălin, a marginalised community where children run the greatest risk of being separated from their family. It is the fourth intervention pillar that we build as part of the process to reform the child protection system in Romania, a reform that is based on preventing the separation of children from their family.

The community centre is a pioneering investment in social protection in Romania, with a holistic approach in meeting the needs of vulnerable communities.

What services will provide the community centre?

How do we estimate the impact?

Over a 20-year period, we estimate that 3,500 people, of which 70% are children, will benefit from the services of a team consisting in social workers, psychologists, health mediators, educators, and school mediators.

Many of these children live in extreme poverty, in unsuitable homes, with no proper food or heating, with no access to medicines or medical services and at risk of early school abandonment. By building an Integrated Service Centre within this community will mean raising the quality of life for them and their families and, consequently, the assurance that they would be able to remain at home and far from orphanages.

We were lucky to have with us our partners from Kaufland România, main supporter of the Foundation in the process of reforming the child protection system in Romania.

In order to show that we are not oblivious to their losses, to tell them you can do it, kid! and to support everything we started, we need your help:

Thank you helping us provide Dignity in 2021, as well!

Over 15 million lei invested in 2021 in our interventions in closing down orphanages, keeping children with their parents and supporting the most vulnerable youngsters to have a good start in in life:

Over 20,000 individual and business donors provided a chance to DIGNITY for vulnerable children. Thank you!