Many of us remember the heart-breaking images of Romania’s orphanages after the fall of the Ceausescu regime in 1989. A sad legacy from those days is the number of young street people who find their way onto Romania’s city streets.
The children who were placed in those orphanages in the late 1980s and early 1990s are now becoming adults. At 18, they must leave the residential care institutions or “orphanages” – but the vast majority often leave without ever acquiring independent living skills.
They find it difficult to look for jobs or flats, they know little about shopping or cleaning their clothes – some don’t even know how to make a basic meal or a simple sandwich. Many drift from the surrounding towns and villages into cities like Brasov, in Transylvania, in the hope of finding work and accommodation, but face the danger of ending up on the streets and being abused by drug dealers and criminal gangs.
To meet the needs of these young adults and to provide them with independent living skills, the Association for Social Services (SCUT) – a voluntary care agency in Brasov set up in 1996 with the support of social workers in Northern Ireland – has established its Aftercare Project, along with an adolescent programme to develop independent life skills among 15 to 18-year-olds before they leave the orphanages.
CMS Ireland has agreed to support the SCUT Aftercare Project in Brasov, where Dr Luiza Goga and two social workers, Raluca Bratu and Cristina Anghel, help these young adults to find relevant training, to get jobs, to rent apartments, to receive health care and to consider further education, as well as providing counselling.
The Parish Priest of Holy Trinity Church (“La Greci”) in Brasov, Father Nicolae Mosoiu, is strong in his praise for the Aftercare Project and its work with these young adults. According to Father Nicolae, the SCUT Aftercare Project is “the very sort of project the Romanian Orthodox Church should be supporting.”
Under the old regime, the Church was unable to engage in social witness and outreach, and its only mission activity was to invite people to take part in the liturgy, he said. Now SCUT and similar organisations are helping the Romanian Orthodox Church to develop a new approach to social witness, outreach and mission.
