Sponsor a Child!
Romanian Orphans
The Romanian communist government in the 1980s believed blood transfusions kept people healthy and administered them unnecessarily to orphans and other children in orphanages. Instead of boosting the immune system, some of the transfusions were contaminated with HIV and many nurses reused vaccination needles, further causing the spread of the disease.
Today, Romania has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS among children in Europe. AIDS orphans are often stigmatised. Families are not always happy about AIDS orphans being integrated into the community and do not want them playing with their own children. Fortunately, almost all children are now receiving treatment and Romania has the worlds largest paediatric AIDS clinic.
SOS Social Centre Bucharest works in partnership with the local government and other local organisations and has been running a Family Strengthening Programme in Bucharest since 1999. It started supporting just three families in the local community. Since then the number of families supported has increased and the range of services has grown too, in order to meet the needs of vulnerable children and their families. The focus is not merely giving hand-outs of food and other household items, even though that is important, but helping families to get their life back in line - how and where to look for a job, how and where to apply for social welfare, how to obtain all their legal rights. The best outcome is that in one year none of the families helped have abandoned any of their children and, through the counselling and the material help that we have provided, we contributed to the strengthening of the families.
SOS PlayBus: since 2000, the SOS PlayBus has given valuable play and educational experiences to children and adults, acting at the same time as a contact point to other social services within the community and as a platform for information exchange between professionals in the child care field. Because it is flexible, mobile and far-reaching in Bucharest and other parts of the country, the SOS PlayBus is able to reach over 7,500 children and 1,500 adults.