ROMANIA
Why Romania?
Romania continue to suffer after 40 years of communism and then 20 years of reforms and freedoms. Much of the population is poorer with a few having increased their wealth.
The people who suffer the most are the poor, the sick and the elderly and partcularly the people who live in badly underfunded state institutions. Many who we work with are the former "Romanian orphans" whose desperate plight had such a dramtic effect on world opinion 20 years ago. They graduated from state orphanages to state institututions for adults .
Romania is placed near Namibia and Columbia in its economic indicators report.
Due to the banking crisis, a huge economic, social and political crises has taken hold.In 2010 the government has had to borrow money from the International Monetary Fund to deal with huge budget deficits.
The economy is doing very badly. VAT (sales tax) was recently increased from 19% to 24%.
All state employees have had their salaries cut by 25%. Funding of medical, social and educational services continue to be very low and, it here is widespread dissatisfaction across all social categories. A new trend is the migration of qualified workforce (doctors, engineers, teachers) to other European countries.
Source: Relief fund for Romania
Background
Link Romania was established in 1991 in response to the devastating television pictures that came out of Romania of the appalling conditions in the orphanges in Romania. Volunteers from Worthing hired a truck, loaded it with aid and drove to Romania. They ended up in a town called Iasi in the NE of Romania and there the work began. Nicolae Ceauşescu’s brutal regime left the country impoverished and reeling from the effects of the totalitarian police state. Link Romania was established to help rebuild lives and communities.
Much has changed in Romania since then - it joined the European Union in 2007, and economic wealth has been achieved by some of the people. However joining the EU has not alleviated the grinding poverty many Romanians still experience.
At Link Romania we believe it needn’t be this way – we believe things can change; that whole communities and individual lives can be transformed. Which is why we work with locally run community development projects to help meet the needs of disadvantaged and marginalised people. Our key ways to beat poverty are through Education and Social Care and we fund and support a number of projects throughout the year that focus on either or both of these areas.
The need is great all over Eastern Europe and Link Romania has therefore extended its work to fund projects in Albania and Moldova. We also delivers and distributes Shoeboxes in Bulgaria and the Ukraine.
Our projects work to get people out of the cycle of poverty – to give them a new start in life – through education and social care programmes.
Link Romania has a Christian ethos and while our faith inspires our work, we are committed to supporting people and projects of all faiths and none.
Sources: World Bank, BBC News, UNDP, International Federation of Red Crosses and Red Crescents