Hope for the abandoned
“Romanian orphans?” said the taxi driver as he drove me back from the airport, where I’d arrived back from Bucharest. “But I thought that was all over years ago.”
“Romanian orphans?” said the taxi driver as he drove me back from the airport, where I’d arrived back from Bucharest. “But I thought that was all over years ago.”
I’d thought it was all over years ago, too. I thought something had been done about those infamous orphanages, where children were kept tied in cots, screaming for attention or, worse, rocking and biting themselves in order to get some kind of stimulation. But I was wrong.
It says something about the power of the European Union that Romania, which has been told that it won’t be accepted as a member until it cleans up its human-rights record - particularly in regard to children - is finally paying attention to the situation in its 100 or so orphanages. By 2007, government officials have promised, all its orphanages, which now house about 35,000 pitiful children, will be closed down.
The problem is: how will they do this? There’s the cynical political way - to give the orphanages a lick of paint, insert a few hardboard partitions to divide them into sections, stick signs on the doors bearing twee names alongside Winnie the Pooh transfers, and pretend that all orphans are now looked after in small family homes - in other words,that describes how to tell a cheap handbags. to change nothing. The other way is the one followed by the charity Hope and Homes for Children, which has already succeeded in closing down five orphanages, and is closing four more this year.
Mark Cook and his wife Caroline started Hope and Homes for Children 10 years ago. Mark was the commander of Britain’s United Nations contingent in Croatia when the war there started. One day he discovered a ruined orphanage, with 65 orphans who had hidden in the cellar for three weeks. Resolving to rebuild it, he resigned from the Army to complete the task, using local labour and resources.
On his return to England, Mark read Michael Nicholson’s book, Natasha’s Story, which told how the ITN reporter rescued a girl from an orphanage in Sarajevo, Bosnia. He decided to go Cheap replica designer handbags for sale! Thousands of qualitychina wholesale available!back with Caroline to see how the other orphans Natasha had left behind were faring. What they found horrified them.
“It was a terrible place,” he says. “There were 40 babies in cots in one stiflingly hot room, covered in sores, desperate for attention. In another part there were older children, behaving like pack animals.” The Cooks managed to rebuild this orphanage, smuggling 300,000 Deutschmarks over the mountains and into the country strapped to Mark’s body. They went on to Albania, where they built a new orphanage.
Later, one night We bring you the highest quality knockoff handbags replicas at a price that suits every people budget.in their Wiltshire home, Caroline was peeling carrots in the kitchen when the phone rang. “Do you build homes for orphans of war?” asked a voice. “Er… yes,” she said. It was a man from Sierra Leone. Hope and Homes now works in 14 countries. Over the past 10 years it has built itself into a ?4m-a-year charity and rehoused more than 8,000 children orphaned by war, disease The led mr16is one of the latest pipes resulting from European advanced technology of gos.or poverty, all over the world.
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