The year 2020 was a hard one for all of us, whether at home or at work. The Coronavirus pandemic made us all reevaluate our lives and change the way we interact with one another. But even with all these changes and restrictions, we can now look back on everything and say that we had a good year.
In order to respect the new laws regarding health and safety measurements we installed a tent outside and glass panels indoors to protect ourselves and our beneficiaries. We constantly clean and disinfect the surfaces and educate people on how to better take care of themselves. We constantly have to come up with ways of improving our work environment and making it more efficient for these difficult times.
In our Humanitarian Aid Project we distributed over 3000 masks and 300 disinfectants and were visited by around 3000 people us this year.
155 families received food packages for Easter and over 200 families will receive food packages this Christmas. 300 children received schoolbags and we assisted over 130 needy families with different school supplies. Regarding clothing, 538 children received clothing (for winter and/or summer) and countless adults and children received shoes. At the same time we assisted people with weekly diapers and monthly female hygiene products.
We are happy to observe that new people are visiting us from different neighborhoods and villages in and around Tirgu Mures. We saw a lot of new formed families and were happy to assist a few of them with the costs for getting legally married.
Because schools were closed for the most part of the school year and due to all the regulations imposed when schools were open, we had to adjust our Education Project as well. Our children wore masks and we held hygiene classes. All the safety measurements were followed at all times.
Due to a wonderful donation in craft supplies we were able to make all sorts of DIY creations and the children were extremely happy with this. We had access to new and good quality supplies. We talked about self care and hygiene, watched cartoons and even decorated our t shirts. 5 children received used computers that were useful especially for online schooling.
Because we couldn’t have summer day camps this year we tried to focus more on supporting the local Rroma school community with different school supplies and uniforms. In this regard two gypsy elementary classrooms and a gypsy kindergarten classroom received identical t shirts and long sleeve shirts for all their students as well as school supplies like copybooks, pencils, pens, coloring pencils and others.
All children coming to the Day Center for the Educational Project received monthly food packages for them and their families as a way of support and encouragement for the future.
In our Medical Project we assisted over 760 people this year with medicine and medical advice. Over 250 people were helped with the cost of their meds and over 450 people with different treatments that are not covered by the medical insurance and that people have to pay money for. These treatments include surgical treatments, burn and accident bandaging and ORL and eye treatments.
21 people were lent nebulizers (some for large periods of time) and 15 people were assisted in getting glasses. We had around 20 cases with very particular medical needs in areas like Cardiology, Gynecology, Psychology, Endocrinology and Oncology. We assisted these patients with investigation/treatment costs, doctors appointments and medical insurances.
At the same time we noticed an increase in chronic elderly cases asking for help with buying their meds. This is an issue because elders have little to no pension and the meds are quite expensive. Without financial help from us, they wouldn’t be able to buy the meds they so desperately need.
This year we assisted 28 babies with milk powder in our Milk Formula Project. We noticed an increase in the demand for milk formula especially with really young new mothers. Some of them are still teenagers and therefore have no breast milk just yet. We also had a few cases of sick babies who are required by their doctors to be fed with the formula.
In our Legal and Judicial Counselling Project we assisted over 180 people with ID documents by supporting the costs of getting an ID and also by filling the necessary papers. Throughout the year we filled out more than 460 papers for obtaining IDs and several social benefits (social aid, children allowance, pension, school supplies aid and others).
Thanks to all our sponsors for the wonderful support and the donations truck in July! We hope to continue our work in the year to come with health, enthusiasm and renewed energy!
