Romania Without Orphans

Total Population: 19.3 million
Total Children under the age of 18: 4.3 million

The Challenges:

35.8% of Romania's 3.7 million children are at risk of poverty and social exclusion. 400,000 school-aged children are out of school. Over 50,000 children are in the social care system and separated from their families, primarily due to poverty, violence, or abandonment.

Romania Without Orphans works on:

Prevention. The best place for a child is their biological family. However, many families abandon these children because of material motivations, finances, or significant difficulties. The local community can intervene and help prevent the abandonment of the children. In the instances where children lose their biological families, the answer is to find each of them a healthy family.
Training and Support. A child that experienced trauma, even just the separation from their family, needs special attention. RWO is helping to educate those who care for these children, in families or in the transition towards a family, to do their best.
Lobby and Advocacy. The government should be a support for families that want to adopt. Because of this, RWO supports reducing the bureaucracy of the adoption process and ensures a smooth transition from abandonment to reintegration or adoption.
Collaboration. ARFO addresses the problem collaboratively and systemically.

Romania WO Website - https://www.romaniafaraorfani.ro/en/home/

Other Information about Orphaned and Vulnerable Children and Family Care in Romania

Better Care Network Information on Family-Based Care in Romania

More information for prayer at Operation World

"Source: UNICEF, Humanium, SOS Children's Villages International".

2023-08-08 00:00:00

National Stories

Summer Camps & Gift Bags

Ukraine Appeal Fund sponsored 130 gift bags to Ukrainian refugee children in Romania who joined Christian camps during the summer of 2022. Our partners at Heritage Ukraine report from their camps in Romania.

Ten’s of thousands of children now have a better chance for a family

Congratulations to our friends at Romania Without Orphans on their recent award and recognition for their tremendous advocacy that has created changes in laws that will help children gain families. On Wednesday, November 25, 2020, ARFO received the Gold Award distinction for the best lobby and advocacy campaign of the year. In awarding the distinction, the competition’s jury analyzed how RWO conducted the preliminary research, planned its actions, established its implementation strategies and tools as well as the capacity to evaluate the objectives. A significant point value was given to the creativity of the approach and the identification of new communication techniques. We thank God for this amazing team of advocates in Romania!

Hope in the Midst of Crisis

Last summer, three newborn babies, were abandoned in a hospital in Bucharest, Romania. The future did not appear hopeful for these three infants. Stelian was born with Down syndrome, Gabriel had tracheostomy and gastrostomy (meaning he breathes and feeds through tubes), and Eric was born with hydrocephalus, West syndrome, and vision loss. More than once, however, the medical personnel expressed their skepticism: “It would take a miracle for a family to take a child like this home.”

Romania Without Orphans continues to influence and expand in 2020

In February 2020 one of the leaders of Romania Without Orphans, Liviu Mihaileanu, was on public television announcing an important victory in Romania's High Court for RWO and for institutionalized children!

Movement Impact in Romania

If you would have attended the first Romania Without Orphans (RoWO) summit in 2014 and met Liviu and his wife Mirela, you would be amazed at the impact this one event had on them as a couple, on two abandoned children, and through them on hundreds and potentially thousands of other orphans and families.

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