Work in the Community Helping poor & needy families in many areas of Botosani, Dorohoi and the surrounding areas. We help provide food, clothing and often if the family is very in need, sponsorship is provided to help the family pull through until they can provide for themselves. The average wage converts to approx. £30-£50 per month and just basic living expenses are often in excess of this. A single women with one child might recieve £3 a month with the rent on a small squalid apartment costing £5
Building Projects Building homes for the homeless. We have built in total 5 houses in the county of Botosani. 3 of these houses are on the outskirts of Dorohoi where the charity holds them and several acres of land in trust. The tenants have a security of tenure on the basis they work the land to firstly provide for themselves and then the excess is sold at the market rate to the Centre of Hope, a family support centre in Dorohoi.
We are currently building one house each year and have land set aside for several future projects.
Important Information All of the money raised by the charity gets spent helping the poor and needy. There are no administration costs and all individuals and teams travelling to work in Romania or other countries do so at their own personal expense. We try and spend as much as possible locally and provide local employment where ever we can. Although we are a Christian charity we do not restrict our work to Christian endeavours, in fact a major part of our work is demonstrating Gods love for all of his children, Gods Love in Action.
Hands of Hope works closely with the Dystrophic Baby Hospital in Botosani. We provide in partnership with other charities, the hospital with new baby clothes, feeding bottles, milk, toys, baby powder, creams, uniforms for the nurses and toys for the playroom. We also provided the nurses with shoe boxes containing regular toiletries and many items that we in the UK take for granted but are very expensive to Romanians. If the nurses had children, we donated one set of clothes for each child. All the nurses were very pleased with their gifts and a few cried, saying that they had never been given a present like this before.
This is one area of our work where we have seen real progress over the past 2 or 3 years and the conditions for the babies are improving each time we visit.
The work with these young children does not stop in the hospital. Many of these children would not return home if their families living conditions were not improved. They would instead enter the orphanage/ foster care system. We help sponsor food and supply packages on a monthly basis which helps support these families with the essentials of living. Items like detergents and soap as well as food and clothing. Each family is sponsored for a period of 6 month after the child leaves hospital.
Ruth and Chris set off for Dorohoi 19th October 2007 and made good time completing the journey in 71 hours. Fantastic weather across most of Europe with a bit of the wet stuff as we came over the Carpathian mountains. The roads through the mountains were the usual mix of roadworks and articulated lorries.
