STREET S KIDS’ SAVIOUR: JOHN NOLAN’S CHARITY C WORK IN ROMANIA
A CHARITY CO-FOUNDED BY A COUNTY WEXFORD MAN 20 YEARS AGO HAS HELPED AROUND 5,000 STREET CHILDREN IN BUCHAREST, ROMANIA,
IN the early 1990s County Wexford man John Nolan witnessed first hand the horror children in Bucharest endured on a daily basis. Having set out on a mission to help poor people in post-communist Eastern Europe, John was so struck by the plight of these orphans that he decided there and then to devote his life to helping as many children as he could.
John, 73, of The Forge House, Whitechurch, met Dr Viorica Vasiliu and came up with the plan of opening a day care centre for the children in Romania’s capital city, Bucharest. To date John, Dr Vasiliu and his colleagues have helped thousands of children, several of whom have gone on to third level education.
A plasterer by trade, John worked for many years in England returning home to Whitechurch outside New Ross in 1972. John’s voluntary work started with his local youth club in Ballykelly.
While attending a prayer meeting in Limerick in 1991 he heard of the plight of Romanian orphans and immediately set about organising food and medical aid for transporting to the orphanages in Romania.
In 1992 John offered to give his annual holidays working in an orphanage in Bucharest. His job was to replace all the windows and doors. Following this experience he saw that there was a huge amount of effort needed to try and give these children the very basics in life.
‘We started off working as volunteers with the Mother Teresa nuns in Romania, Croatia, and Albania,’ John said.
John and some friends travelled to these countries for three weeks at a time, renovating houses.
The Street Children of Bucharest was founded by John, Brian Geary from Limerick and Colm Molloy from Carlow.
The group bought a site and built a purpose-built daycare and a residential home called St Joseph’s Home where 46 children can be accommodated.
‘In 1997 Colm, Brian and I said it was time to figure out what we could do for all the street children who were hungry and delicate. They would live day to day, begging.’
This lead them to Dr Visilu who left her job working in a city hospital to work treating the children suffering from rabies, drug abuse, infections and in some cases Aids, having been pimped out as prostitutes from ages eight and up.
‘We left in March 1992 for Bucharest as volunteers for a charity based in North Wexford. I was shocked by the conditions people were living in. There was no food in the shops. We were bringing food and our truck was held up at the border so we had to live on watery soup and bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the three weeks. There wasn’t a value on human life in the city like we know. I remember meeting a boy who kept stubbing cigarettes out on his arm and another boy who was set on fire. These street children have no identities, no papers so they can’t get a job. They feel no one cares for them so they are nomads, ghosts, wandering the streets, high on glue. Many live in sewers, destitute, and because the police don’t go to check on them, some die.’
In the summer of 1994 the number of children seeking the streets of Bucharest as a refuge started to increase and by 1996 there was an estimated 5,000 children on the streets. This trend continued up to 2003, a year when Romania had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world at 15.3 deaths per 1,000 live births. A 2015 Eurostat data report revealed that Romania has repeatedly had the highest infant mortality rate in Europe, standing at 9.2 deaths per 1,000 live births.
‘In the early days I found it very difficult to understand that here were we living good lives in a country so close by and this was a country crippled with poverty. It shocked me. These were a people who were told by their leader every day that they were no good. He turned off the power on Christmas Day so they couldn’t cook their Christmas dinner. It was very hurtful for the people going through all that and trying to live with that.’
He said: ‘Many of the children had no identity as they didn’t know their parents. If the mother died they would be left to fend for themselves in the city. In 1997 we rented a property and we worked on that for a couple of years. It was a day care centre but it wasn’t successful as the doctor wanted to keep the children in overnight for treatment so we started preparations to buy a site in 1998 and we bought it in 1999. It had a green area around it and a doctor’s surgery, beds for 45 children, social workers and nurses.’
At Casa Sf. Iosif children are given clean clothes and food and they receive medical attention.
THESE STREET CHILDREN HAVE NO IDENTITIES, NO PAPERS SO THEY CAN’T GET A JOB. THEY FEEL NO ONE CARS FOR THEM SO THEY ARE NOMADS, GHOSTS, WANDERING THE STREETS. MANY LIVE IN SEWERS, DESTITUTE
The annual running cost of running the centre is €240,000. In 2015 the charity’s income was €193,000 but this fell to €76,000 last year. ‘In 2014 we were able to fundraise €12,000 from Romanian companies and in 2015 we raised €35,000 and in 2016 we raised €37,000 so at present we are still very much dependent on our Irish fundraising. We receive no grants from any Government or from the EU.’
Every Christmas children at Casa Sf. Iosif are given Christmas presents and food packages are presented to their families. The centre’s after school programme has been very positive with children getting merits and awards each year at school. A man of great faith, John said children at the centre are taught to say prayers before and after their meals and are brought to church, even though Catholicism is a minority religion in the country.
John and his family helped to organise truck loads of food for the children at the end of every calendar year through collections at supermarkets across the country. ‘ When we were fundraising some people would say “What about the poor children in Dublin,” but there were amazing support systems in this country. We used to leave supermarkets in places like Listowel with our vans full to the brim. It was a big event in the Whitechurch community every year when the lorries were being loaded by local residents of all ages but when the recession hit donations completely dropped off.’
To raise awareness about the plight of the street children, John gave talks across the country, but the focus at the time was more on the children of Chernobyl who were highlighted regularly on television.
Under Nicolae Ceaucescu’s Systematization programme tens of thousands of families were moved from rural Romania into the sprawling city of Bucharest to live in cramped apartments in high rise buildings. Suicide and depression was rife and the children were born to a despairing generation of parents.
As drugs weren’t available the children turned in their thousands to sniffing glue they stole from petrol stations, and cellulose paint, to escape from the horror around them. ‘It twisted their minds. Their bodies were gone out of shape. We never treated them while they were sniffing paint and glue. We gave them a choice to get off the stuff and then we’d treat them. Many did but as many didn’t.’
John remembers vividly one day looking out at the city from the high rise apartment where he was staying at the dull grey city of sorrow before him and thinking it was not a place to live in if you were depressed. ‘ The city has fabulous buildings, better than Dublin, but once you go into the side streets and see the sewers where the children live and the poverty and the apartment blocks where 40 families are piled in together with no running water, sanitation or heating, where black smoke from bin fires rises, you think twice.’
Seven years ago the charity opened a childcare centre which cares for children aged three to seven. Here they are washed, fed three meals and taught lessons.
‘We’re trying to break the prostitution cycle. Some of the children who stayed at the residential centre went on to university. ‘
John recalls one 11-year-old girl who went to travelled on her own to see the bright lights of Bucharest, only to end up on the streets.
‘Fortunately a social worker found her and brought her to us. Otherwise she would have ended up in prostitution. We gave her money for her train fare home. She is one of several thousands children we have reunited with their relatives.’
Another girl who attended the centre went on to study at a college in Bucharest and is now working at a meat factory in Cahir.
In 2010 John and the team had to wind down the residential care centre due to a lack of donations. ‘We have at least 400 children waiting to get into the day care centre. We give the carer or mother three months to prove that they have been looking for work and to clean up their apartment and pay their bills and if they do that and have documented proof of looking for work we will take their child in.’
After 20 years, John says what he has learned most from his time with the Street Children of Bucharest, is the value and importance of food and of having a euro in your pocket.
‘When you see these people who have nothing. I often think of the old people who used to come to the centres. They were near the end of their lives and after a whole life they had nothing to show for. We would be here worrying about getting our house painted, or a newer car but when you end up with nothing, it’s very sad.’
Due to ill health John, 73, has not travelled to Bucharest for two years, but he is hoping to travel later this year or in early 2018.
‘We always said that while God keeps this going we’ll keep going, providing we have funding. I hope that my health won’t effect my work there. I’ve great help with my wife and my daughter’.
In 2004 John was awarded a humanitarian awarded and lifetime honourary membership from the Royal Dublin Society for his work with the charity and he won the Rehab Wexford Person of the Year award in 2007, along with a Knights of Columbanus award in 2012. He thanked Seamus and Margie Kane for the use of their yard for storage of vehicles and food over the years and thanked all the Wexford people who have supported his life saving charity. Over the past two decades no child has died at the centres. ‘ Children died in the sewers from gases, the stench, glue and disease but no child died at our centre.’