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Casa de Copii, Hincesti
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In 1993 the
England football team visited Moldova. A UK journalist accompanying
them reported on the terrible conditions at an orphanage for disabled
girls at Hincesti.
Since then a number of European charities, including Moldova Aid Project,
have sent humanitarian aid to the Casa de Copii (literally: 'house
of children') at Hincesti, improving the conditions.
In the early nineties with inadequate food, heating and hygiene, deaths
at the orphanage reached 32 a year. By 1994, this number had been
reduced to two.
Once these children slept in fours in beds that were their playpens,
their dinner tables and their toilets. Now conditions at the orphanage
have improved with new cots and supplies of bedding and clothes.
When our trustees visited in 1994 the children owned nothing - not
a toy or set of clothes that belonged to them alone. Now the dormitories
are full of toys and embroidered mats that the girls have made.
Of course, sending clothes, bedding and toys is only a short term
solution. Most of the girls at the orphanage are not orphans at all;
in the desperate economic climate their families simply could not
afford to keep them. The situation is particualary bleak for disabled
people in Moldova because it has few facilities to meet their needs
and disability still carries a social stigma.
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The Chisinau City Council,
with whom we work closely, is seeking to reintegrate some of the girls
with their own, or adoptive families. Some of our aid goes to help
children at the project's 'halfway house'.
Our city council contact Ana Gobjila is pictured here with Christina,
a resident of the Hincesti orphanage. Christina looks like a toddler
but is at least six. Years of neglect and malnutrition stunted her
growth.
Click here to see what we are currently collecting
for the orphanage.
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