"Cercetați toate lucrurile, si păstrați ce este bun!"

Apostolul Pavel

Gabi Slavitescu is a hero of mine. I’ve never met a Romanian with such a passion and motivation to stand in the gap for the orphans and neglected children of Romania. I’m honored to call her my friend and coworker. Below is her moving testimony of why she became a social worker and what she is doing to help stand in the gap for children in need.

“Joy, sadness, empathy, tears, frustration, challenges and satisfaction… this is all encompassed in the ten years of daily experiences as a social worker in the Brasov Children's Hospital in Romania. All these experiences have started as a challenge. I was twenty years old when I saw on TV a three year old boy who was punished very strangely by his drunken father. The father wanted to discipline his son so he cut off the fingers from one of his hands. This was the moment when God showed me that I should start to “be the voice” for all those children in need. It was my calling to be a social worker. In 2005 I started working in the Brasov's Children Hospital as the one social worker. It was not easy because social protection of the children was an unknown concept in the medical field.

The medical services were the priority, so I only had a small room as an office. The only support for the beneficiaries was a box of clothes, brought in by Sarah and Steffi Vogel, in the corner of that small office. They were the only two persons who knew about it, what the social field meant, what was involved with the work, and the needs of the children in the hospital. They had discovered all the abandoned children in the medical unit at the same time I did. It was hard to believe that there were kids in the care of the hospital for more than six month. The hospital was for them became ‘family’ and we became part of their family too. We started to represent all these children and to ask for their rights, especially for the right to have a real and normal family. Since 2005 until the present, the main role that we have played is focusing on preventing the abandonment of the children. I say we because I was not alone on this long way. I have gotten support from Sarah and Steffi, who are now Firm Foundations Romania because over time the box in the corner became too small to fit in the whole support of FFR. The box contains services that support the children from the hospital and their families, to prevent the abandonment, to keep the babies in their own families, and to cover the basic needs of the clients.

 

 

 

The most happy-ending stories are happening because alongside me I have a team and the support of many people who are not indifferent, most of them from the USA. Because they do care, we can help the children to spend their childhood with their family. We are covering the needs of food for the babies, and we are providing material support for the families, medical supplies, counseling, social mediation, etc. It is sad that the state is not providing enough social services, especially for children under the age of two, who are at risk of being abandoned, but for the hospital, it is a blessing to have the ‘necessary’ type of support for the social issues. I hope that the Firm Foundations Romania team will never come to an end or at least not until parents understand and discover that each child they are given is a precious gift from God. Parents need to care for and be responsible for each small angel’s life and soul.” Gabi Slavitescu

For more information about Firm Foundations Romania, please visit our website at www.firmfoundationsromania.com or email me at Această adresă de email este protejată contra spambots. Trebuie să activați JavaScript pentru a o vedea..