A humanitarian organization called Childrin on the Edge, or children on the brink of danger, entered Romania after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in the 1990s to discover tragedies in which children and shelters lived. Among other Western humanitarian organizations, it has provided decent care for these children, abandoned by their families, and the Ceausescu Government has sponsored them for use in its government programs when they grow up. Today, all the efforts of this organization have yielded a promising generation, looking ahead. Many of these children have been able to integrate into society, earn high degrees, and contribute to the country's renaissance.
When Ceausescu came to power in 1966 to make great plans for the country, Romania entered manufacturing late, after World War II, and the birth rate was very low. Ceausescu adopted the Stalinist doctrine, formulated by Communist leader Joseph Stalin, in the 1930s, which argued that population growth helps economic growth. In the first year of his rule, his government issued Decree 770, which prohibits abortion for women under the age of 40, who have fewer than four children. He believed that "the fetus is the property of the whole society," and declared that "anyone who gives up having children is abandoning the laws of national continuity."
The birth rate quickly doubled, but the rate of increase slowed later, as Romanian women resorted to illegal abortions, and the results were often disastrous. In 1977, Ceausescu forced all persons without children, regardless of gender or marital status, to pay an additional monthly tax. In the 1980s, condoms and pills became expensive, but these methods were available in Romania, so they were completely banned. Maternity became the duty of the State, and the Secret Police and Security imposed harsh regulations in this regard. Doctors who performed abortions were jailed, women were screened every three months at their workplace for signs of pregnancy, and if they became pregnant and did not give birth later, they could face trial, and fertility became a state-controlled tool. This policy, combined with poverty in Romania, means that more and more unwanted children are abandoned by the family for state care. No one knows the estimated number of children in orphanages, and it is estimated that the number of children in state centers in 1989 reached 100 thousand, and escalated from there.
Since World War II, there has been a system of state institutions for children, but after 1982, when Ceausescu redirected most of the budget to repaying the national debt, the economy faltered, the conditions of child-care homes deteriorated, and electricity and heat were often cut off, and there was no Enough staff in these houses and there was not enough food in them. While the material needs were assessed, the government ignored the emotional needs of these children. The government denied doctors and professionals access to foreign periodicals and research, and nurses did not receive adequate training. As a result, many children were exposed to HIV, as skin needles were rarely sterilized. Growth retardation was routinely diagnosed as a mental disability. Institutional abuse of children has spread, without deterrence. While some children's caretakers did their best, others stole food from children's kitchens.
Inhuman treatment
When the revolution destroyed Ceausescu's government, the world press discovered an archipelago of orphanages and children's homes, and horrific images. Children stacked on the lower floors. The images shocked the Romanians as much as the rest of the world. The previous government removed these children completely from the rest of society.
The transformation of many of these shelters is due in large part to Childrin on the Edge, a charity founded by businesswoman Dam Anita Roddick. Like millions of other philanthropists, Roddick was influenced by pictures of orphanages in Romania, which spread around the world in 1990 following the brief bloody revolution that ended the life of Ceausescu and his wife. Some 24,000 children are still in institutional care in Romania, which is now a member of the European Union, and there is still concern about the quality of care in some state-run homes. Ceausescu's malicious quest to produce a cheap workforce of children whose parents could not keep them. Roddick, who died three years ago, joined charities that went to the former Eastern Bloc state.
Dire mode
Childrin on the Edge was one of the associations that traveled to Romania after the fall of Ceausescu, but instead of searching for children in the capital Bucharest, its convoy of three trucks and 20 volunteers headed north towards Iasi province, which is still the most The poorest in Romania. There, the group asked to be directed to the homes of the most needy and most isolated children. She went to a nursing home called Casa de Kobe, where she began helping 600 children she found there. Bentley, who was in the first convoy, recalls: “The children were almost naked, running everywhere, and three or four of them slept in one bed. Most beds were contaminated and dirty. "It is a mixture of urine and sweat. The armies of flies were all over the place, attracted by the smells of feces that stained the walls and floors." "The most striking thing was the lack of any individual care for the children, and to control them, they were beaten by the staff, many of whom were carrying sticks for this purpose." "When we entered the nursery area, known as Orphanage One, we did what anyone who loved the children would do, we got them from their beds and hugged them, but they didn't respond to our embrace, they didn't know how, they were completely empty of love and affection."
In 1994, Orphanage One was closed, and the children moved into a new housing unit, divided into small family units, in a nearby town called Baskani. Staff made every effort so that siblings in other children's homes could see each other during the summer camps. Later, 25% of the children of CHILDREN or THE EDGE were able to go to university.
Ceausescu adopted the Stalinist doctrine, formulated by the Communist leader Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, which sees population growth as conducive to economic growth.
After 1982, when Ceausescu reoriented most of the budget to repay the national debt, the economy faltered, and the conditions of child care homes worsened.
The child «Roxana» recovered from surgeries of the past
Of the 44 children in a children's house in a remote village deep in Romania's impoverished northeast corner, a three-year-old girl with wide brown eyes, Roxana, was named. Her mother delivered her at birth to the children's home because she could not support her after her alcoholic husband abandoned her and left five other children with her.The woman was so poor that she could not afford to feed two new arrivals, Roxana and her brother Ionot. Like thousands of Romanian women, encouraged by the government to give birth to at least five children under the tyrannical rule of the late Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Roxana's mother handed over her daughter to the state. Two decades later, Roxana, now 23 years old, confident and smiling, speaks eloquently, contrary to expectations, it is proof that this wide-eyed, brass-skinned girl survived the horrors of children's shelters in 1990, despite all Odds, flourished. In February, the young woman, whose life was once unstable, will graduate in Romania's oldest university, where she will receive a bachelor's degree in physiotherapy, a prize-filled wardrobe, a sign of her athletic ability. And a football player.
She talked about the first time she met her mother when she was 10 years old. "She was still very poor," he said. "The social worker at the nursing home, where I stayed, gave her some money to buy me a cake. I was very happy that someone would buy me candy." “I didn't have strong feelings for my mother,” she describes her feelings about her mother. “I was more interested in the cake, and as much as I felt about my mother, it was only for me someone who bought me cookies. Of course, I was upset, and I said, 'Why is this happening to me?' ? In the end I put the guilt on my parents. '' "A few years later, I asked my mother why she left me. She talked about poverty and my alcoholic father, but when I realized how much she was talking about, I decided never to ask her again," she recalls.
Roxana was in the childhood home when she was young. From the source
They sow fear in children to control them
After the Roman Revolution in 1989 overthrew the communists who ruled the country, Daniel Roccariano, 38, and other young people who grew up in orphanages, founded an association called Federici, a phrase taken from the Romanian language, meaning "landfill." The group is pressing the Romanian authorities to acknowledge hunger, cold, beatings, physical and sexual abuse, and the lack of care for an estimated half a million children in the country's gloomy orphanages before the end of the Cold War, and demand that the authorities apologize.
Roccariano tells a story that summarizes all the tragedies that these children have been living even after they grew up. “We were surprised by the night supervisor of the children's home, and we were fighting in our bedroom. As a punishment, he ordered us to hit each other, I was the first, but I hesitated to beat my friend Florin, but when it came to Florin he didn't hesitate and hit me hard.” "My best friend hit me with so much hatred that I was scared," he said. Supervisors were planting violence among children to humiliate and control them, he said. Older children were beating young people, teachers were beating everyone, and staff would prefer to beat children in the face and head. "The beating has left deep psychological scars in our interior so far," he says. As a result, it is sometimes difficult for Roccariano to look directly at people. "We were eliminated as human beings, we became victims of silence and humiliation. "Those houses were massacres of souls," he said. "How can all these people recover from this disease?" About UNICEF
Daniel Roccariano. About the source