A visit to an orphanage while in high school leads one student to action
By: Jessica Demetriou
Orphanages that tie children down to beds and force them to remain in soiled clothing for days are not a thing of the past, but a staggering reality to the citizens of Romania.
This issue, which has stemmed from years of societal problems, caught the attention of two Princeton University students over three years ago.
Clare Vierbuchen and Allison Cheung, who both graduated in 2005, banded together to create Open Doors, an organization that strives to combat issues leading to child abandonment in Romania. It has established a group home and a community center there.
Ms. Cheung, vice president of Open Doors, said that Nicolae Ceausescu, who was president of Romania from 1967 to 1989, put a ban on abortion, contraception and sex education in the 1960s.
"The condition of these children has a lot to do with the history of Romania dating back to Ceausescu’s semi-communist regime, which left behind a range of economic, social and political problems." Ms. Cheung said.
"The result was a huge influx of babies born into a country where the quality of life was miserable," Ms. Cheung said. "Parents couldn’t afford to take care of children, or, in many cases, simply didn’t want them, thus they simply abandoned them on the streets."
These children have come to be called "Ceausescu’s children" and have been part of a vicious cycle of child abandonment.
Once they are old enough, they are released to the streets and often have children of their own, who usually become victims of the orphanages themselves.
"Romania has received help from foreign aid organizations and the government has worked to reduce the numbers of abandoned children and place them in foster care," Ms. Cheung said. "However, the numbers of abandoned children to the numbers of foster care and adoption programs are still enormously inadequate."
Although Romania is attempting to fix this problem, orphanages have too many children in them and are severely under-financed by the government, Ms. Cheung said. Illnesses go untreated, education is insufficient, and children receive little or no personal attention.
"One of our goals in founding Open Doors is to help kids who are hard to place in foster care, but in need of a stable environment," Ms. Cheung said.
Clare Vierbuchen, president of Open Doors, came face to face with the conditions of Romanian orphanages when she visited one on a trip she took in high school.
"I went there seven years ago on a high school trip to Bucharest for a week and it was really horrible," Ms. Vierbuchen said. " They have kids tied to beds and they spent hours sitting on plastic toilets."
Ms. Vierbuchen said that after working there during her stay and seeing the atrocious conditions, she decided to keep going back as a volunteer.
"I used to go back every summer for three months at a time and then during winter break for a month," Ms. Vierbuchen said. "Now I’ve lived there for a year and a half."
The first project that the Open Doors team initiated was a group home which took five children from the orphanage and placed them with two foster parents, Ms. Vierbuchen explained.
"We also started a community center a year and a half ago and that is still a project we are developing," Ms. Vierbuchen said. "It is for about 13 to 15 families."
She said the community center helps children with their homework, gives them food, clothes, and a place to shower. It also provides parenting and employment assistance for adults in the community. Sometimes they even invite children from the town to spend time with the children at the center.
"Most of the children have individual sponsors and the programs have general sponsors that give money yearly or monthly. A lot of the donations come from New Jersey and other parts of the United States," Ms. Vierbuchen said.
Ms. Cheung said that the organization is made up entirely of volunteers to avoid overhead costs as much as possible and to ensure that all the money goes directly to the kids.
"We did door-to-door fundraising in Princeton Township on several occasions, made presentations to schools in the community in order to raise awareness, and held fundraisers at local supermarkets," Ms. Cheung said.
The founders and volunteers of Open Doors said they hope to raise enough money to maintain the current programs and even open another family center to bring additional kids into the program.
"One of the biggest questions I get from people when I’m out fundraising is, ‘Why Romania?’ Obviously, the social and political situation in Romania is far less visible to the public than that of other areas of the world," Ms. Cheung said.
"I think it’s important to work on raising greater awareness and knowledge to that end."
More information on the organization Open Doors and how to donate to it can be found at www.opendoorsromania.org, or by contacting Ms. Vierbuchen at [email protected].

