BRIXHAM ROTARY ROMANIA PROJECTS
PROJECT ONE – PARADA
When we were looking for our first project Julien Colder contacted (amongst others) a friend who was the Romanian manager of Air France. He suggested that we look at supporting a Charity Project called Parada in Bucharest.
One of the aspects of the Ceausescu regime was that they were very keen to increase the Romanian population and there were financial incentives to encourage people to have more children. One result of this was that there were many children in orphanages and when the regime fell the state of the orphanages and the children in them became headline news across the world.
When we became involved most of these children were teenagers and a considerable number of them were living more or less feral in the tunnels carrying services (gas etc.) under the streets of Bucharest.
Parada was a charity set up by a professional clown (a Frenchman) called Miloud. The object of the charity was to prepare these children for adulthood in the normal world and Miloud used clowning as a means of getting their attention.
The first step was to get the children to go to school. Because of the way they lived some had no idea of time or punctuality so they had to be taught that before they could start at a school.
A number of the children had already grown up and a few of those were now full time helpers at Parada.
Parada was also celebrating the first of its children to obtain a place at university.
When asked how we could help Parada said that they needed a pickup truck with back seats which they could use for many things including roaming the streets at night looking for unaccompanied children.
Parada had been given some run down premises to use as a base. They were refurbishing it but they needed equipment ranging from computers to items for a gym.
We agreed to provide the truck and use the balance of the money for equipment. The costings were : –
Contributions : –
Brixham $1,250
Carhaix $1,250
Torquay $1,250
Bucharesti Continental $200
The Rotary Club of Brixham undertook a number of fundraising projects between 2004 and 2006 in support of the strife experienced by the populace of Romania as the country destabilised due to internal conflict and as a result the populace descended into poverty.
These projects were conducted in partnership with our partner Rotary club of Carhaix. The images below relate to the first of these projects which was completed in 2006.
This project provided a pickup truck essential to enable support activities to continue. The vehicle was for use by members of an organisation that was looking after orphaned and poverty-stricken children. The organisation provided shelter and food to street children that were more or less living ferral under the streets of Bucharest.
When the communist regime in Romania fell the Country suffered destabilisation as the government and organisations collapsed. Families struggled to survive and there were found to be a lot of children abandoned in orphanages. In many cases these were the same children 10 or 15 years later.
ROTARIANS HELP WITH VITAL ROMANIAN HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT
Vital hospital equipment has been given to a hospital in Romania, thanks to collaboration between 6 Rotary Clubs.
The Rotary Club of Brixham teamed up with Rotary Clubs from Dartmouth, Paignton, Preston and Carhaix-Rostrenen, France and Cluj-Napoca in Romania.
The Clubs successfully applied for funding from Rotary International HQ to provide much-needed equipment for the County Hospital of Cluj-Napoca in Romania.
