Romania Child protection solutions exist at the level of the community

Project : Romania 24 Nov 2009 | fum migration poverty roma

Bailesti, Romania: at one hour drive far from Craiova, Bailesti is one of the six communities where the Tdh team operates. In this remote area, hundreds of families belonging to the Roma community are living between the harsh problems of endemic poverty and migration.

The houses are made of hearth and a mix of second hand construction materials. The children are playing in the yard under the surveillance of one woman. Nearly all the men are abroad. Some of the children travelled in Italy, Spain or Portugal in the past. Today, they stay at home and they are going regularly to school.

After three years of TACT project in Dolj county: 120 children have been directly protected by the NGO and the Community Consultative Committees (CCC) and more than 160 child protection professionals have been trained on the reinforcement of child protection mechanisms at the local level. The head of the CCC is very realistic: “we do what we can for the children but we need more services adapted to their specific needs”. The CCC is counting all the necessary professionals: a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer and several other professions helping the local social services to prevent problems for the children. But the decentralisation process is not functioning well and the funds are late to come here…

2010 will be a transition period for Terre des hommes. Lucia Stirbu, the Delegate of Tdh ad interim, (in the center of the photo, with a red scarf) will be replaced in December 2009 by Alfonso Gonzales, former country representative of the Swiss organisation in Moldova. Huge challenges are envisaged for the coming three to five years in Romania.

Romania, a country in which 22 millions of Romanians are living. And 10% of the population is belonging to the Roma communities: the highest concentration of Roma people in Europe. According to most of the studies and figures from specialised bodies, the biggest contingent of foreign unaccompanied minors wandering in Western Europe is from Romania. [VT]