By Andy Baker
Impact As of Saturday, March 12th:
Fed 6,500 refugees at the border
Housed 1,100 people in transit
78 orphans and 110 adults in long-term care
Multiple trucks and vans of aid sent into Ukraine
Friends,
I am grateful for everyone who has continued to partner with us as we help the Ukrainian people that are fleeing their country for safety in Romania. I know many of you have probably never heard of Remember the Children and are first time donors to us. Please know I am humbled by your trust in us, and I assume that there was a trusted family member, friend, acquaintance, or organization that directed you to us. For that I am grateful. For those of you who are long time friends, thank you for joining us once again to help children and their families in this unfortunate crisis.
Remember the Children is in its twenty sixth year of service to the Romanian people and our fifth year to the people of Tanzania. We began in Romania shortly after the fall of communism as a response to the orphan crisis. After twenty years of working with the Romanian people to address this need, we helped launch a team of our Romanian colleagues to the country of Tanzania to replicate the successful work we had done in Romania. Tanzania presently has millions of children in crisis due to HIV/AIDS that has been at pandemic levels when combined with the malaria problem.
We find ourselves uniquely positioned to help in this crisis with our long-term service in Romania and with a network of colleagues and friends that encompasses most of the country. As the Covid-19 pandemic has been slowing, I had been concerned with how we would breathe new life into our work. Never would I imagine that a war would begin, and we would find ourselves receiving refugees on the first day.
My day started today with a message that some of the funding we had sent was used to buy two industrial washer/dryer sets. We have friends in west central Romania that are feeding, providing showers, and providing a place to sleep for twenty-four hours before the refugees continue their journey to western Europe. Most of them are arriving with only the clothes they are wearing, so we now have a place for those clothes to be washed after they have traveled many days, some walking the entire time.
A good friend of mine was asking for help with blankets at the border by the refugees. He crossed into Ukraine yesterday taking humanitarian aid, and he found at the border, a line as wide as the road, and one mile long of people waiting to cross into Romania. He offered them food, and most of them declined. All they desired wee blankets to keep warm. As we talked late today, 1000 blankets had been secured, and we were able to provide the funding. They will reach the border tomorrow. It seems like such a short-term solution, but the people are very cold.
My friend also informed me that through their contacts a message was received from Kyiv. The message was, “We need bread.” He told me culturally, when you ask for bread, you have nothing else. Our friends are in the process of buying flour and other staples to get to them. Remember the Children is buying the supplies and covering the cost of the truck. Our friends are going back across the border as humanitarian workers. They have a certain designation assigned to them to protect them, but there are guarantees in war. (Please excuse my vague writing. I am protecting identities and the way they are operating.)
As I stated earlier, our organization has always been about orphans. We received twenty-nine refugee orphans with their seven caregivers last Sunday. Finding yourself as an orphan is traumatic enough. Fleeing for your life compounds an already fragile soul.
I’ll leave you with the words of a dear colleague and friend. “I am so emotional…just trying to do what we can and praying for peace and salvation for so many. So overwhelmed at times… not by direct contact, but by the needs, suffering, and despair of many, many mothers, and children. No effort is too small. We thank God for Remember the Children and all their friends.”