The Salard Community
A Smiles Foundation Project
In Romania
In June 2007, Dr Claudia Micula
– The Smiles Foundation’s doctor to the
Family Care Project – was
visiting a sponsored family in the city of Oradea when approached by a
desperate lady asking for help. The lady’s sister – married with 12
children – had just experienced the horror of a house fire that
destroyed the house and
claimed the life of their 5 year old daughter. The family were now divided, with
ones and twos staying in various homes
with friends and the parents with some of the children sleeping on a
mattress in the field beside their burnt out house.
The
Smiles Foundation visited the scene and family, and were
shocked at what
they saw. A small Community of 19 families living in horrendously poor
conditions and whilst it was reasonable to say that the family who's
house had burnt down were worse off - it was a case of 'only just'! Some
of the housing in this community was as bad as our Chief Executive had
seen in 17 years of visiting Romania.
The
Smiles Foundation immediately committed to building a new house for the
family that had first brought us to the community.
The mayor's representative saw our horror at the conditions and asked if
there was any way we could help more families.
These situations face the
Smiles Team daily but our CEO felt in this case We Should, We Could and
We Would do something!
Within
6 weeks of seeing the need, Smiles had built a new home for the family
who can now begin to rebuild their lives after the tragedy of the house
fire and loss of their child.
At a cost of £2,670 / $5,340 Smiles set to with providing materials and
financing labour costs to build this small but effective home. How well it looks and how delighted and thankful are the family who have
been re-housed. Thank you to those who have supported the building
costs. Now we hope to get sponsors for the families to ensure we can
continue supporting them back to total independence.
We
have since added families from Salard to our Family Care project
as sponsors have become available. We have started a housing project and
in the first year built 3 new homes for families with special needs in
and around the community. We launched the
Container Challenge and
have purchased, renovated and fitted out five 20ft containers which are
now better homes than they have ever known, for the worse case families
in Salard.
We want do to more and will do more as sponsors and support becomes
available.
If you
can help, please sponsor a family now or contribute what you can
each month towards the Medical or Housing support we are now offering
the Salard Community.
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