Charity's urgent £42,000 appeal for Romanian care centre

Fara founder Jane Nicholson with some of the youngsters helped by the existing St Raphael’s Centre which she set up in Bucharest in 2009.

A Walsingham-based charity has made an impassioned plea for help to raise the £42,000 it needs to save vulnerable Romanian youngsters from a bleak and uncertain future.

The plight of Romania's abused orphans has fallen from the international spotlight since the barrage of coverage it received following the demise of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship in 1989.

But Fara, a charity which has worked in the country since 1991, says that although the children have grown older they are still living in appalling conditions in state-run institutions.

On a recent visit from her north Norfolk office, Fara founder Jane Nicholson met a group of 14 teenagers with learning disabilities, whose term at an institution is due to end in July - but the care system has nowhere else for them to go.

Fara has already set up a centre in Bucharest to provide care and education for youngsters like this, and plans to run a similar rehabilitation project from a guesthouse it owns on a farm in the Suceava district, in the north-east of the country.

With the help of Norfolk MEP Richard Howitt, Mrs Nicholson has secured an audience with European child poverty forum Eurochild in June which she hopes will result in increased pressure being exerted on Romanian authorities to fund such projects.

But in the meantime, she is desperate to raise £42,000 to provide staff and training to run the centre until the end of the year, so it can accept new arrivals in July.

“We are negotiating to get some sort of contribution from the authorities,” she said. “But we are going ahead with opening St Michael's in July because these young people are actually being moved out of an institution and have nowhere to go. Having seen them, I really cannot accept that.

“The government says there is nowhere to put them so they will either end up on the street or in a mental asylum. I feel we have to trust and go ahead otherwise what will happen to these young people?”

The charity, named after the Romanian word for “without”, provides specialist teaching and training for young people but has to raise 95pc of its funds through its own efforts.

Mr Howitt met with Fara in January to discuss what he described as a “shocking and unacceptable” failure by the Romanian authorities to fund care projects for orphaned and abandoned children.

Mrs Nicholson said: “Richard has arranged for me to speak to Eurochild in Brussels in June, and they will put pressure on the government in Romania to fund this project. In the meantime, the need is so desperate that we need people to help us with the running costs for the rest of this year. We would be grateful for any size of donation.”

To donate to the project, contact Fara on 01328 821444 or visit www.justgiving.com/farafoundation