Given the bad economic situation in Romania low-income families are in real distress when it comes to ensuring funds for the many basic needs of the family. Children are perhaps the most vulnerable members of the family. It is hard to explain to a child why mommy and daddy cannot send you to school and provide for his basic needs of clothes, food and school supplies. To ensure that the children of orphans and the ones coming from underprivileged families have a fair start, we would like to help them provide school supplies, so they can fully access educational opportunities.
COST
Each child would receive 25 Euro single assistance in order to cover expenses for school books, bags and other needed school items. 1000 Euro is the support for 40 children.
In this program Good Samaritan is partnering with several other local/national organizations that are specialized in educational programs and preventing the school abandonment.
For children from low-income families and orphaned children in institutions
Children of orphans - A number of Good Samaritan's orphan clients now have children of their own. While this offers them the joy of creating the family that they never had, it also can magnify their struggles. Due to the compact social network of their parents (mainly only fellow orphans), these children have limited opportunities to interact with other children in town. Furthermore, providing full-time care for their children also limits our clients' opportunities to work, continuing the cycle of dependence.
We would like to offer support to pay for kindergarten/daycare. In this program, the supported children will be given the opportunities to develop their learning capacity by being taught by professional teachers and according to the state school program, will be provided with two meals per day, but most importantly they will be granted the chance to interact with children from all social classes and be exposed to other role models. Additionally, their parents can extend their network of friends and use the free daily time to work.
COST
$50 USD/month $ 550 USD per school year
Partnership between Good Samaritan Beius, Romania and Home for Everyone Foundation - Sofia, Bulgaria
We are aiming to help orphans from the state placement centers to go to a local kindergarten rather than spend all their time in the institution. In the new environment they can make friends with the children from town as well as have access to a higher quality preschool education. This means better trained and motivated educators, much better equipped classrooms, access to different classes in music, dancing, languages, etc.
COST
$120 USD per month pays the attendance of a child at the kindergarten: it covers only food as the rest of the expenses are subsidized by the kindergarten
BREAKING THE CHILD ABANDONMENT CYCLE DUE TO POVERTY
Help a single mother, a poor family to raise their own children and not leave them in a placement center due to poverty. Help a child in a family placement to have the means to live a decent and happy life. Provide for their basic needs of food, clothes, shoes, medical services, occasional financial support.
Through this program we help three categories of disadvantaged people:
- Single parents that have reduced income to raise their children, especially such single parents who have many children and no family support from their parents or relatives. These are families where children are at great risk to be abandoned in a placement center due to poverty. We provide them with in-kind donations to cover their basic needs of food, clothes, shoes, hygiene; medical services and occasional financial support.
- Very poor multi-member families, some of them of gypsy origin. In the Gypsy culture girls marry at a young age. Because they begin early and because Gypsy girls are usually not sent to school often at all, some have as many as fifteen pregnancies over their lifespan! Not having possibilities to earn their bread (women do not work while men are undereducated and with less job opportunities), many beg or steal to survive. Many of the children are sick or die at a young age; others are abandoned at birth. Because of the poverty of most Gypsy families, they are incapable of caring for so many children and so, child abandonment and abortion are easy solutions. Around eighty percent of abandoned children in Romania are of Gypsy ethnicity.
- Abandoned children who are in a so called simple family placement (maternal assistants). It means that the biological parents keep their rights while in the meantime the child is with a family. Usually, to care for the child, such maternal assistants are paid through employment contracts with the Romanian state, as well as, receive monthly allocation for the child needs. In some cases though when the parent (maternal assistant) retires or his/her certification expires the family does not receive any more the monthly allocation from the state. They receive rather symbolic help of 90 lei per child/month (20 Euro/27USD) which is very little to cover all their needs. Under the financial burden of the family (maternal assistant) these children are at permanent risk to be returned back to the state. In spite of everything their “family” desires to keep them due to the special bond they have created. We would like to prevent them being returned to the state care again or growing up with a family in poverty conditions.
Living in the state orphanage of Romania, under the conditions of limited financial subsidy, many youngsters dental care needs were neglected and with the years and the lack of on-time intervention, became severe. Not having permanent jobs, working seasonally or earning too little many are facing the impossibility to pay their own dental care expenses.
Good Samaritan works with local dentists, who can do the needed interventions for the orphans. Not only new look but also a better health is being brought to the ones who already received dental care help so far. A new project would serve another at least 10 people with the cost per each varying between $500 and $1500.
View photos in our photo gallery.
Through this fund Good Samaritan strives to give chances to orphaned children, children of orphans and children, coming from low income families to have equal access to education and later in life better chances to integrate in society with success. Many researches show that the lack of education is one of the important factors for creating poverty, while poverty, in the context of a shrinking economy, unemployment and low knowledge on family planning, leads to high risk of child abandonment. By giving education to all these underprivileged children we want to break the cycle of child abandonment due to poverty.
Help us offer the poorest children of Romania and Bulgaria a chance for better education and thus prevent the child abandonment due to poverty.
