The Most Vulnerable Children in Bulgaria will all live in family-like care

To a significant extent, this is due to our Bulgaria Team. Their most important achievements in 2015, in partnership with state authorities and partner organisations:

1. Eight baby homes in the pilot institutions closed for good - children now live in family-like care.
2. Razgrad and Vetren institutions closed for good - all children now in family-like care.
3. A model of de-institutionalisation implemented, through the District DI Coordination Mechanisms.
4. There are child and family focused priorities in the new Action Plan for the Implementation of the National Strategy Vision for DI in Bulgaria.
5. Our prevention of child separation from their families and reintegration programmes are stable and sustainable, with thousands of children and families benefiting hugely from this.

The Norway Case, Watching Yourself in the Mirror & the Forest You can't See from the Trees

Norway has been on the lips of many these days. The Bodnariu case has been turned upside down. I refrained from writing anything so far, as the theme took a strange turn, in contradiction with the suffering of many children. This morning, however, I heard a piece of news like the ones in Gulliver's Travels: a Romanian Parliamentary Committee will go to Norway, to see what has been done in the case of the five siblings taken from their family. This surprised me, as I have not heard of parliamentary committees to take note of the drama and the suffering of the 8,000 children traumatised by institutionalisation here, in our country. Neither have I heard of parliamentary committees to consider that the tragedy of the almost 800 of them who were put into psychiatric units, psychologically decimated, due to the nightmare of living deprived of affection and of family life. I have not heard of members of parliament interested in the 320,000 children living in extreme poverty, in Middle Ages-like conditions, as the ones in the picture above. Without electricity. Without running water. Without heating during the winter. Hungry, and sick with cold. Torn apart by unimaginable deprivations, without shoes in the middle of the winter.

We fail to see them. They are not relevant, as they are here, in our country, and it does not really matter here. We have some 4 million children. The formal statistics say at least 55% of the children in Romania suffer from severe material deprivation, more intense than in any other European state. Which parliamentary committee is investigating this? We have 350,000 people surviving in marginalised communities, like the ones in the image below.

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Who cares about them? Who checks if they have a personal identity number, if they have a birth certificate, if they have an ID, if they have ever seen a doctor in their life, or if they go to school? Which member of parliament proved to be scandalised, shocked at the inhuman conditions in which hundreds of thousands of children survive in our own country? We are the first in the EU at child mortality, with 10 to a thousand, double than the European average, and more than 40% of the deaths of children under the age of 5 have causes that could be prevented, but who cares about all this? These are here, under our noses, where we can make the law ourselves.

Members of parliament, why do you not create committees to check the causes of these real dramas, in our own world, in our own country, where you have a mandate and can actually change some things fundamentally?

When are we going to get rid of this cheap hipocrisy, of these false pretense defenders of child and human rights? We actually tolerate gracefully starving children on the roads, little girls washing our windscreens, raped girls, incest, broken bones of children from parents' hitting, frozen mothers with babies at their breasts lacking milk, aggressive fathers, beating wives and children under our eyes, hoards of youngsters begging for a penny, or they get a beating "at home" for not doing their ratio in begging.

How much do we have to see the sick new normality, with "man being a wolf to man", as Plaut said. We do not see the forest from the trees... You are scandalised that Norway has rules they actually observe, good or bad, as they are. You jump when people who accepted a citizenship are obliged to accept also what comes in a package: the civic behaviour, the rules of living in society, as they are, good or bad. I do not want to say anything about the effectiveness of separating five siblings from their parents. Neither about the way the Bodnariu case has been worked on. I am sad to think of the five siblings, especially as the oldest is only nine, but let us not forget the father has been there for 10 years, married to a Norwegian woman. They are all part of a system of laws, social norms, civic regulations, in a state of law. A state ranked among the first ones in terms of quality of life.

Instead, we have in our own country over 8,000 children up to the age of three suffering from malnutrition, and over 100 of them starved to death! This does not stir any discussions, or parliamentary groups, or protest meetings?

We are not able to look at ourselves in the mirror, but we look at others. We are full of problems, but we look at others' issues.

Thousands of children are born without being registered at birth, living at the outskirts of society, exploited, deprived of care, health services of any kind, without basic education. Many of them do not even officially exist. They are not part of any public evidence system, without access to any sort of social protection services.

You want more? Are you not bored yet? We have over 90,000 children with mental health challenges, but only 140 active pedo-psychiatrists. That is, about 650 children per specialist doctor. We have almost 5,000 youngsters exiting special care each year, with a pillow in their hands, without nothing at all in this world, without a shelter, without anybody or anything to offer them a bit of help. You see the image below? This is how thousands of "homes" look like in our country, with tens of thousands of children in them. In winter time, they get warmed up with a stove, with fire in the hut, wide open, with the hot chimney at a hand's reach, dizzy of hunger and cold.

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Let's give Norway what is Norway's to take. It is a country one should look up to, with open people, and more especially, with people who have helped us so much.The grants offered by Norway to Romania have helped exactly in such situations. They did not come with parliamentary committees to ask us questions, even if they could have done that thousands of times. They came, instead, with something constructive, they revigorated the NGO environment, they funded social projects, they built bricks where our hundreds of members of parliament preferred not to even look at.

it is hard for me to admit it, but we are a country accepting violence upon children. We tolerate aggression every day. We shout as a habit. We abuse our children out of habit, by insults, by bad words, by shouting and screaming and threats with beating, when we exhaust our very few arguments. We do not know how to be parents. For us, sayings such as "beating comes from heaven", or "beating a child is like medicine", or "two-three hits stream from love", or "where the mother hits, the flesh grows", or "you carress them with a few snaps before a beating" - are common grounds. And the list is not exhausted. I think we are one of the nations with the most sayings about the "educational value" of beating, which says a lot about our collective consciousness.

Let us not be hipocrits. We have so much drama under our eyes... Better we do something about it, in addition to just talking about it. The problem is - when there is work to do, when there is action to take, many of these noisy people just ran away.

Young adults leaving care and the problems they face

Had I grown up in a state system, taken from one institution to another, changing unexpectedly my entire life, switching from a group of people to another, ending friendships without my acceptance, being torn apart from carers whom I dared consider ”mother” and ”father” - I would have certainly been in a different situation. I think one needs unbelievable amounts of ambition, self-awareness, strength and self-confidence, simply to face life without a family on a day to day basis. I guess coping with hardships, being up to the expectations of those around you, and observing rules established without your consent, or input - are not easy tasks. And then, when young adults about to leave care are low performers in school, exhibit challenging behaviour, or fail to meet expectations, we often treat them as anybody else. As anybody else who had the chance of a life in a family. As anybody else who had love, appreciation and affection when he/she most needed them. But such young adults, deprived of love, appreciation, acceptance or affection are not like anybody else. I think one can call it a success if they manage to stay sane under such circumstances as those they grew up in. I think they have all the reasons to fail. Not that they deserve to fail, but that life gave them estrangement, distance, hostility, depreciation and cynicism.  And if, after all this, they are capable of graduating a school, getting a diploma, finding a job, and making a life of their own - then they are true heroes.

These are my kind of heroes. And I am privileged to have some of them as my friends.

Legendary Champions Are in the HHC România Team!

Very rarely do I have the opportunity to announce such elite partners for our programmes! Legends of sports, some of the most valuable names, such as Nicoleta Grasu, Doina Melinte, Mihai Leu, Camelia Potec, Maricica Puică, Virgil Stănescu, Monica Iagăr, Elisabeta Lipă, Iulian Stamate, or Amatto Zaharia, are part of our Hope and Homes for Children România, team. All of them expose their medals in our special stand, at the  Sport Expo exhibition, in the International Bucharest Marathon. They will be present at the marathon, running for us, in the HHC Romania T-shirts!

Between 3 and 5 October, we are organising a live museum of Romanian sports, with their memorabilia: - The professional boxing Champion Belt, awarded to Mihai Leu, in 1997 - The rally equipment in which Mihai Leu became national rally champion - The last bronze medal awarded in 2009, in Rome, to Camelia Potec, olympic champion, and President of the Romanian Swimming Federation. - The "IKF World Kempo Championship" Cup 2011, awarded to Amatto Zaharia, President of the Romanian Kempo Federation - The First Prize Cup, awarded to Virgil Stanescu in 2012, in the National Basketball League. He is Vice-President of the Romanian Basketball Federation. - The T-Shirt in which Virgil Stănescu played for the American basketball team South Alabama, as he is part of the team"s Hall of Fame. - The T-Shirt in which Iulian Stamate, national handball team player, won the Hungary Cup, in 2009.

I am proud to have in our team on Sunday, for the Marathon, such amazing personalities, who have written history in the world of sports and have, intrinsically, done so much good for our country.

My Children Run with Me to Raise Funds for the Poorest of Children

On October 5, two of my children, Mara, age 17, and Aaron, age 14, accompanied by myself, will run in the Bucharest International Marathon. I am really glad they had the initiative to take this challenge, in favour of the most vulnerable children in Romania, those still surviving in state institutions, and those about to be torn apart from their families. In the marathon, we will be joined by more than 60 supporters, celebrities and friends whose aim is to raise funds for the children and families we are here to serve.

Please join us, help us raise funds to eradicate institutional care and prevent child abandonment!

Please donate online at:http://www.justgiving.com/stefandarabus

THANK YOU!