Why Romania still needs our help

Romania continues to suffer badly after a legacy of 40 years of severe communism. Civil society and social services have had to be reconstructed from scratch.

Subsequent fashionable - but dubious - western “market led” reforms by the likes of the World Bank have left most of the population 8 times poorer than 10 years ago. A tiny fraction has thrived. But that’s all.

An astonishing 44% of Romanians are now reportedly living in poverty. (See note 1)

The World Bank in 2004 places Romania just above Namibia and Columbia in its economic indicators report.

Every 5th Romanian Child is Exploited: some 900,000 of the approximately 5 million children of Romania are forced to work. Approximately 300,000 (of these) are forced to perform extremely hard manual labour (See note 2)

The north east of Romania - where we have many of our community-based projects - was recently described as "the absolute poverty pole of Europe" – (See note 3)

95% of Romanian households in some parts of the north east have no running water, 10% cannot afford to connect to the electricity supply and there are no social services - other than those we provide - for an area of 24,000 people.

One doctor we know of has to care for 16 villages and a population of thousands (Vultureni Communa, Bacau County).

With 18 deaths per 1,000 babies born alive, Romania has the 3rd highest infant mortality rate in Europe after Albania (37) and Ukraine (21).

What we are doing in the face of this

There has been no precedent for care of the disabled, sick and elderly. Local communities and even the authorities need to be shown how it can be done.

Our models of care of children, elderly and other needy groups act as seed-corn projects for the local communities and the authorities to develop their own programmes.

Part of what we do with these model projects is “dare to fail”. This is something that isn’t that easy to do for a Romanian bureaucrat. But when they see how we have tried and tested a social project that brings real solutions to problems in their area, they have been able to adopt it with confidence.

They then secure funding from the Government. We move on to the next thing.

If we hadn’t done it on the ground they would have been stuck with an unworkable plan foisted on them by some western consultant who knows nothing of the realities of life on the ground but everything about implementing unworkable plans - for which others will get the blame when they invariably fail..

Sadly the cameras have long since left Romania's notorious institutions and it is failing to attract the international support it needs to reform. This is doubly sad considering the time is now ripe for real change.

A new generation of younger Romanians are poised to get involved at senior level in the country’s problems. We’re still there with a dwindling number of other foreign charities but we need your help for what should be the final push towards self-sufficiency and the sustainable care of the less fortunate in Romania.

Note 1

Born two years ago, under the orders of the Government, the Anti Poverty Commission (CASPIS) presented to the government its first report in 2004.

The Romanian population over the past ten years has decreased from around 23,000,000 to c. 21,000,000. The decrease is said to be due to migration of the workforce.

According to the CASPIS study, some 6.5 million Romanians live in poverty, of whom 2.4 million live in extreme poverty and another 1.2 million cannot afford basic food rations.

The data suggests a Romania filled with people that live from one day to another. It must be emphasised that extreme poverty is very widespread.

Note 2

"Every 5th Romanian Child is Exploited: some 900,000 of the approximately 5 million children of Romania are forced to work. Approximately 300,000 (of these) are forced to perform extremely hard manual labour . Most of them are illiterate as they were withdrawn from school in order to be able to 'do their job'.

About 89% of the exploited children live in rural environments. Poverty was deemed as the main cause of this situation."

Study by UNICEF, Ministry of Labour Romania and the Bureau of
International Labour Affairs May 2004

Note 3

Significantly, over two thirds of the paupers live in rural areas, where the poverty risk is 2.3 times higher than in urban areas. Geographically speaking, 25% of Romania's paupers live in the north eastern province of Moldova, where the poverty risk is 43%. Generally speaking 20% of the paupers are farmers, while another 20% are pensioners.

The most affected individuals are usually children or aged 15 - 24 (40%), followed by farmers (20%), retired personnel (20%), employees (10%) and unemployed (9%).

Recent socio-economic studies

"Romania has the lowest purchasing power in Europe - 1/7 of the European average. . Zurich, London, Luxembourg and Oslo have the highest purchasing power in Europe. At the opposite end are 8 Romanian regions and 2 Bulgarian regions. The absolute poverty pole is in North Eastern Romania" [2]

Austrian press agency APA on a study by Consodata marketing(Germany) and RegioData Research (Austria) April 2004

" With 18 deaths per 1,000 babies born alive, Romania has the 3rd highest infant mortality rate in Europe after Albania (37) and Ukraine (21) . rural areas are the most affected" [3]

Mother and Child Institute, Bucharest April 2004