Romania
We work with three organisations in Romania: FAST, Casa Mea and The Atelier Sacelean Association.
FAST
FAST is short for "Fundatia pentru Asistenta Sociala si Tineret," which means the "Foundation for Social Assistance and Youth." FAST runs a range of projects improving the lives of children and families in the marginalised Roma communities around the area of Sacele. Their projects include building better homes for families, running educational programmes and a music school, and more!
FAST was started in 1998 by Daniel and Ema Hristea, an inspirational couple, who felt it was their calling to help the disadvantaged and needy children in their country.
Ten for Ten Campaign
This is your chance to get involved with a campaign we are running in association with FAST to help ten siblings living in abject poverty. The children’s father, Sorin, will be able to provide for them if he has the chance to work. For two thousand five hundred pounds, it will be possible to build a carpentry workshop for him. He will then be able to support all of his children.
If two hundred and fifty people give ten pounds, we will reach our target!
How can you get involved?
For this campaign to be successful, we need people to promote it and also to donate. If you can do either (or both!), let us know!
Promoting the Ten for Ten Campaign
It will be really helpful if you can tell as many people as possible about this campaign, so we can reach the two hundred and fifty people more quickly. You could promote it, for example, online or by telling people about it in person. You could also put up one of our flyers, so more people can see it. You can download our flyer here.
Donating to the Ten for Ten Campaign
You can donate online on our 'donate' page, or email Catherine on catherine@chworldwide.org for other ways to make a donation.
Gold and Silver donors: If you can give twenty to fifty pounds, you can become a silver donor. If you can give over fifty pounds, you can become a gold donor. Gold and silver donors will get a special mention on our website!
For futher info, please email Catherine on catherine@chworldwide.org
Casa Mea
Casa Mea is an organisation dedicated to providing loving group homes for orphaned and abandoned children. At present, Casa Mea owns a house in Prejmer, where up to twelve children can live, although there are currently fewer children than this. Casa Mea will ensure that these children grow up in a loving, family environment.
Executive Director, Jan Calos, established Casa Mea in Romania and spent some time looking after the children herself. We very happy to be able to fundraise to help support the good work of Casa Mea.
We were recently able to give a donation of one thousand two hundred and fifty pounds to pay the salary of a carer for a year.
We want to be able to continue making donations towards the salaries of the staff at Casa Mea and are looking for people who can either help fundraise or donate towards this. The children have experienced such hard times in their short lives, before being fortunate enough to go to live at Casa Mea. Two more new children came to live at Casa Mea last year. It is vital that there are enough people to work with the children once they get there. CHW would like to keep making donations to cover the costs of employing one staff member for a year. We would then hope to raise that amount each consecutive year to keep sponsoring the staff member. We are hoping too, that eventually, we would be able to raise enough to then sponsor more than one staff member. These are big plans, so we have to start small! It would be wonderful if you were able to contribute to this. Either one-off donations or continuous ones (where you can make regular donations each month) would be so good.
To see options for donating, please visit our "donate" page. If you have any questions about this, please email Catherine, on catherine@chworldwide.org.
The Atelier Sacelean Association
The Atelier Sacelean Association runs a project at the hospital in Sacele, which aims to improve the care given to the children and babies admitted there. It also runs programmes to help underprivileged children with their education. These programmes include summer schemes and a day care centre, which runs throughout the year. The children helped by the Association come from very poor families, usually from the Roma community. We hope to be giving particular support to the hospital project, although we may try to fundraise for the other programmes from time to time.
The Coordinator and Founder of the Association, Cristina Birsan, also runs training sessions for people in Romania who wish to be volunteers. As well as this, she supervises volunteers from abroad who want to give their time to help these children.
Our past projects here have included raising money to support the programme at the hospital and arranging a clothes collection, where the clothes were distributed to children in the hospital and to other underprivileged children in Sacele.