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THE NEED In 1990, the world was shocked to discover Romania's darkest secret... a hidden world of orphanages that seemed more like Nazi death camps than child care facilities. As mentioned in the "Why Romania?" section of this page, during the 1980's, the communist government of Romania undertook an absurd scheme to increase their military might by manipulating human reproduction. By increasing the population, they reasoned that they would be able to build a larger military. Unfortunately their poorly planned policies did much more harm than good, and instead of increasing their military power, they just created an entire generation of unwanted children. Soon hundreds of orphanages were overflowing with thousands of abandoned children that the government was unwilling to take care of. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the world found tens of thousands of sick and deformed children living in deplorable conditions. They were naked, tied down to their beds, infected with diseases and starving to death. Across the country as many as 50% of institutionalized children died annually because of the care given them by authorities. It was a hopeless situation that is still not fully resolved, even after more than 2o years. Immediate steps were taken by the new government to fix the problems and aide poured in from all over the world to improve conditions. Romania has made enormous progress in protecting its young people since then, but there is still a huge number of abandoned children in the country. Adult orphans that spent their childhoods being treated like animals have no idea how to provide for their own children and so they throw them away in a vicious cycle of abandonment. In addition to that, millions of Romanians are still living in extreme poverty and give their children up in desperation. In
2009, only 20% of houses had indoor plumbing, with most people trying to
survive on a typical salary of only $203 US a month. Imagine trying to live on
a salary like that in a country where the average price of bread is $2.11 US a
loaf; a gallon of milk costs about $5.93 US; and the price of gasoline hovers
around $8.14 US a gallon… and those figures don’t even include the 24% sales
tax. Life is hard for the masses in Romania, so hard that in the past year
alone, 4 different families have asked us to take a total of 11 children from
them because they can’t afford to feed them anymore. They love their kids… but
they don’t want to see them starve… so they give them up. The
economic crisis that is affecting the world is affecting Romanians too, and as
a direct result of it, thousands of new children have been added to the already
overwhelmed government system. Many parents have fled the country leaving their
children behind, and there are fewer humanitarian agencies working in Romania
now then there have been in 15 years. OUR RESPONSE Because there has been a need for such a long time, we decided in November of 2004 to not only partner with existing children's homes, but to create one of our own. By the summer of 2005, we had purchased an acre of land in Ghioroc, a nearby village of 1,800 in the wine producing Minis Valley, nestled between a lake and the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. The church in Martins Ferry financed a loan for us, and through that, ground was broken during the summer of 2006 for our own child care facility. Construction continued throughout 2007, until the house was enclosed and all systems were functioning. Since that time it has continued as finances permitted and we are now finished with construction, with the exception of carpet in the bedrooms, kitchen cabinets and some landscaping work outside.  We are still paying monthly payments on an outstanding debt of $67,000 as of January 2012, and until that amount is paid back, will most likely not be financially able to take in children, but we move forward with the project in God's time. Things have taken much longer than we had expected, but God has blessed us with many new and exciting opportunities for service as we have patiently waited. When we have the necessary funds, all of our paperwork is in order and all of our government inspections are out of the way, we will be able to provide a Christian home for up to 12 children. In the meantime we are busy working with our church plant and have also been helping young adults who grew up in children's homes and orphanages get themselves established and on their feet. We currently are providing a home to two young men who grew up in the Treasure House, the home we worked with for many of our early years in Romania. They are 21 years old, but are still in high school due to the neglect they suffered during their younger years. You can see pictures of them in the galleries below. Click here to learn more about our village, Ghioroc Click here to learn more about our general area, Arad County Click here to learn more about our region, Transylvania |
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710 South Zane Highway Martins Ferry, Ohio 43935 information@romaniankids.com
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