Article written by SANDRA DOLAN

The charity was founded in 1990 by members of St Mark’s Church, Biggin Hill. Father Flood, Parish Priest of St Theresa’s Church, has been President of the Charity since the early days.

We have been supporting disadvantaged children in the Comanesti area for sixteen years now. During that time we have been involved in many projects, frequently working with other charities. At the moment our biggest commitment is the running of The Robert Cole Centre, which is a day centre for children with Special Needs. Some of the children live with their families, some are from a children’s home. In the following article, the Director of the Centre, Mrs Delia Barzu, explains the aims and activities of the Centre.

When the Centre opened in 1997, there were 13 children in attendance. Now there are around 70 on the roll. In June those first thirteen children graduated, having completed their compulsory education. We were very proud of their achievements and their tenacity. However they are not yet ready to take their place in the community.

We are planning to extend the Centre, to prepare our graduates for jobs, hobbies and for living independently. The extension will be called “Foundations for Life”. The estimated cost of preparing suitable accommodation is £20 000. With the help of generous supporters, we have reached that target and are ready to start the building work.

We also need equipment, furniture and resources for the extension. We intend to set up workshops for sewing, carpentry, car maintenance, ICT training, Art, Crafts and Music. If you could provide any facilities for these workshops, we would be very grateful indeed. Clare and Phil have kindly organised this website to co-ordinate the collection of equipment.

In November we shall be sending a truck loaded with Christmas gift boxes. We would like to include in that cargo as much as we can for the “Foundations for Life” centre. Filling that truck is our next target.

Sandra Dolan

Chair.

Clare received an invitation to the groups 15th Anniversary reunion celebrations 14 years later which were to be held in July 2005. She attended these with her husband Phil and realised that the then named 'Biggin Hill Romanian Relief Fund' had followed and kept records and photographs of many of the surviving children that she had cared for all that time ago. With interest Clare asked Sandra what she and Phil could do to help the charity and they were invited to distribute shoeboxes out there the following Christmas.

On the week long visit Clare, Phil and 3 others distributed around 1,000 shoebox Christmas presents to orphanages, schools, families and apartments in the same district Clare had visited previously. A highlight of the trip was visiting 'Casa Lumina' a family home for 24 built in 2000 home to many of the children from Darmanesti hospital and other institutions.

They also visited an AIDS hospital unit in Bacau and an adult institute in Ungureni, approx 2 hours drive from Bacau. Ungureni Adult Institute for the 'irrecoverable' houses around 150 adults with disabilities, mental, physical, behavioural, emotional in severely deprived conditions.

During the visit Clare met around a dozen of the children she had cared for and they both gained an enormous amount of pleasure from bringing aid, care and charity to so many youngsters with so little to call their own.

Phil was amazed to see just how much help and aid is really needed in this day and age and what a difference a week long visit can make. They decided to return at the end of May 2006 for another week long trip, this time the focus being the delivery of family boxes to local appartments and flood victim families.

The main problem however is that although we can continue to provide huge truck after truck of toiletries, clothing, toys etc there needs to be a plan for long term empowerment to the socially disadvantaged young people of Comanesti the opportunity and skills to make a life for themselves.

So the dawn of a new project... a vocational and life skills centre right in the heart of Comanesti. This centre will provide further education, otherwise non-accessible, to the graduating pupils of the Robert Cole Centre.

Clare and Phil together with the Biggin Hill Romania Group call upon YOU to help create REAL new opportunities for many of the babies we saw on British T.V. back in the early nineties who still require so much help and support. They and those living with very little financial, social or educational support in the surrounding district have shown they can do so well with so little and need our help to give them a platform to their futures.