Welcome to the website of the Relief Fund for Romania. We are a UK / Romanian charity organisation helping a wide range of groups in need in Romania, including  children and adults with special needs, the sick, the elderly and destitute communities. 

We were founded in December 1989 and were intensively involved in many aspects of bringing relief to people in desperate need - many of them survivors of Ceausescu's appalling regime.

Please note that some of the projects mentioned on this website have been completed in recent years. (Even if they use the present tense). We are leaving them online for posterity and, not least, to help with future aid intervention ideas, practises and information.

You can find details of our most up to date work here 

Read about our Projects

See How You Can Help

Read our Latest Report

We fund Romanian partner charities to run various long-term community based relief projects. Plus we also run our own charity projects


Here's what we've been doing recently:

Home Care of the Elderly

We continue to care for elderly people in their own homes. As a result of the growing reputation of the team's kindness and caring, we are being referred more and more people with terminal illness for palliative care. This is the only programme in the NE of Romania offering home care and nursing services to unwell, old people.

An evaluation by the Romanian authorities said the programme was "unique in Romania in the high standards of care and dedication to the old people who are cared for"

Many elderly people also attend our Day Centre.

This was renamed The Dr Stefan Ciobanu Day Centre in honour of our friend and colleague, Stefan Ciobanu, who was killed in a car crash. Stefan inspired and led the project. It will remain a great legacy for a good man who died so tragically young.

We're pleased to report that a related project Milly's Village helping the elderly, in nearby Buhusi, (which we don't fund) has "Twinned" with Alderney's Connaught Care Home in the Channel Islands.

Colin Williams, Treasurer of Milly's Foundation Alderney's Dementia Charity, hopes that sharing plans on items such as dementia training will be of benefit to both operations". You can see a newsletter on their work here The project is managed by our sister charity FSC. Their related newsletter is here

Our long serving Director of Programmes, Julia Smyth, retired a few years ago but kindly agreed to visit the projects in Romania and report on their progress. Checkout her "warts and all" reports here. They make for interesting reading for anyone interested in aid intervention theory and practice

Funding

Over the past 20 years we have spent millions of pounds  on our charity work in Romania, as well as many gifts-in-kind

We also paid for various direct charity expenses in the UK such as sponsoring the costs of expert volunteers.

We fund various Romanian charities and groups directly who are delivering help to those most in need through various programmes.

Our partner charity Fundatia de Sprijin Comunitar - The Community Support Foundation 

When we helped our Romanian employees set up their own autonomous charity we would have been very surprised - and thrilled - to see how much they have achieved. Here's how they summarised it:

• We helped an average of 25,000 people a year for the past 10 years
• We have created jobs for 200 people, of which 10 have been working with us for over 10 years
• We were granted the rare Public Utility Title by the Government
• We have won many national awards

In Bucharest we continue to support the Budimex, a major Children’s Hospital.

With our sincere thanks to all our friends who help make this possible.

The Relief Fund Team