Romania
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Wishing Well has been active in Romania since the fall of the communist regime in 1990. Initially we delivered lorry loads of aid to hospitals, children's orphanages and adult institutions in Bucharest, Slatina, Craiova and across the Olt area. As time moved forward we started supporting small groups and individual volunteers spend time in Romania to help refurbish and improve some of the homes and institutions infrastructure. Painting, decorating, re-wiring and sorting out plumbing problems. We also sent teams of volunteers to work directly with the children and to help train staff teams working with them.
In 2004 we opened our own community resource centre in Slatina and developed our work further with teams of volunteers, many of which we recruited locally in Romania. The International Volunteer and Community Resource Centre provided services for children, especially Roma children. Including; English language lessons, Summer school and after school education support sessions, advocacy services, local volunteer recruitment and support. In 2014 we handed over the running of our project in Slatina to our Romanian sister Charity, Fundatia William Tyrell. We continued to support them for the next couple of years with both financial and practical assistance but in 2016 we made the difficult decision to withdraw totally from Romania in order to free up our time and resources to support projects in Tanzania and the UK. Romania is now a fully fledged member of the EU and although there is still a significant need in the country we felt that if we continued our work, this would allow the Romanian authorities to continue to ignore their responsibilities. |
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