Why Romania still needs our help
Romania continues to suffer badly after a legacy of 40 years of severe communism. Civil society and social services have had to be reconstructed from scratch.
Subsequent fashionable - but dubious - western “market led” reforms by the likes of the World Bank have left most of the population 8 times poorer than 10 years ago. A tiny fraction has thrived. But that’s all.
An astonishing 44% of Romanians are now reportedly living in poverty. (See note 1)
The World Bank in 2004 places Romania just above Namibia and Columbia in its economic indicators report.
Every 5th Romanian Child is Exploited: some 900,000 of the approximately 5 million children of Romania are forced to work. Approximately 300,000 (of these) are forced to perform extremely hard manual labour (See note 2)
The north east of Romania - where we have many of our community-based projects - was recently described as "the absolute poverty pole of Europe" – (See note 3)
95% of Romanian households in some parts of the north east have no running water, 10% cannot afford to connect to the electricity supply and there are no social services - other than those we provide - for an area of 24,000 people.
One doctor we know of has to care for 16 villages and a population of thousands (Vultureni Communa, Bacau County).
With 18 deaths per 1,000 babies born alive, Romania has the 3rd highest infant mortality rate in Europe after Albania (37) and Ukraine (21).
