The honeysuckle bower is a special place at the Agents of Change Community House in Podriga. In the morning before the sun gets too high the housekeeper and visitors harvest the flowers to make a sweet-tasting herbal tea. Continue reading “The resilient honeysuckle bower”
News
2022 was an eventful year ….and the work continues
As we pass the halfway point of 2023, having survived a harsh winter and now searing summer heat, our work in Romania continues with both local communities and support for remaining Ukrainian refugees. We are amazed by what our supporters helped us to achieve last year, and you can read all about it in our annual newsletter
New visitors to Podriga House
Our community house in Podriga is now open as a drop-in centre on certain days of the week. It’s mainly for local people who feel the need for comfort and companionship. Our partnership with the Monastery at Stiubieni which deepened during the Covid-19 lockdown is bearing new fruit, with the Abbot joining the drop-in. He was there on the day that ‘Tomas’ (not his real name) turned up from a neighbouring village for the first time. Wearing all his clothes in layers, and not having accessed washing facilities for some time, he sat at the table and talked for an hour non-stop. He regaled the staff with increasingly fantastical stories of his apparent world travels. Having listened for all this time, and wanting to give Tomas a new focus, the house co-manager found a chess set and offered it to him. It seemed an odd choice, yet for the next hour Tomas sat in silence beating the Abbot at chess. It is good to be able to open our doors once more.
Child’s play – a big step forward
Recently an Agents of Change worker met with a translater from the the Deaf Association of Botosani County who was looking after a four year old girl from Ukraine while her deaf-mute father went for an opthalmic assessment. He is normally her main carer, with her deaf mother having found a full-time job. “Daryna” (not her real name) was solemnly playing with a doll’s house belonging to the Association. The only item she had to hand to put in the house was a toy dalmation, and this she did repeatedly. It was the first time she had been seen playing since reaching Romania with her parents some months ago. She hasn’t spoken since leaving Ukraine, when she was the only hearing person in the house who could alert her parents to the air-raid sirens going off. Their apartment in East Ukraine was destroyed by shelling and so they took refuge in Romania. She has gained a place at kindergarten in Botosani which may help, although her psychological rehabilitation is likely to be slow, without access to specialised therapists. Agents of Change will do what we can, which at this point may be as simple as fulfilling Daryna’s dream of owning a new doll and her own doll’s house. The donations of supporters since March make such steps possible.
New school year – new country
Many of the people who fled to Romania in Spring this year from Ukraine have returned home. Those who remain are often the people living with conditions or family circumstances that do not sit easily with the insecurities of Ukraine as a country under threat of attack. Agents of Change continue to support the Ukrainians we have come to know in ways that help them establish a sense of normality – such as getting equipped to start a new school year. Sergei and Oxana are both deaf-mute and Sergei is severely visually impaired. They have three children aged 19, 8 and 4. Their middle child was given a school place in Botosani to start this term, but the list of requirements had not yet been issued by mid-September so he could not yet start school.
His little sister was more fortunate in gaining both a place at kindergarten and the list of items that parents are obliged to supply. Clothes, shoes and equipment come to £200 which the parents didn’t have. So Agents of Change took the family shopping, along with Mona, a Romanian translater in sign language who is rapidly learning Ukrainian and is also deaf.
The list was gradually ticked off – winter coat, sturdy shoes, slippers for the classroom and all the other supplies that a four year old needs for kindergarten. There was a school rusksack for the boy too, ready for when his list arrives.
It’s clear that he will need a laptop once he starts, so off they went to the electronics section to get one that had all the necessary programmes loaded on it. As well as helping him with his schoolwork it will be used by the whole family to communicate with Ukraine, and they will be able to watch films on it in the two bedroom flat that the council of Botosani County has allocated to them.
Shopping finished, the whole family went off for pizza with Agents of Change.
Sergei had never been assessed to find out what might help his eyesight, so Agents of Change have booked him in for an assessment at the eye clinic we use.
As the numbers of Ukrainians we are supporting has decreased the regular support we are providing is being maintained, due to the generous response to our Ukraine Appeal this year.
What’s happening now?
Returning from three months in Romania, our founder Alison Butcher 
has reported that many of the groups of Ukrainians who we were supporting have moved on from temporary accommodation. The group living in the cinema at Saveni have moved to where they can find work and stability while they wait to return home to Ukraine. Similarly the people living in the collective farm have dispersed, and the office of the Deaf Association of Botosani County is no longer being used as a transit house. The desire of many Ukrainians who found shelter in Romania is to return home, despite the ongoing threat of war. They are aware of those areas of the country which have quietened down after the initial Russian attacks, and are desparate to be reunited with their families. Agents of Change will help where we can. In the meantime we continue to provide local support to a small number of Ukrainians whose medical and health needs are too serious for them to contemplate moving. Having found safety and friendship they, like others from Ukraine, are wondering what will happen next. Meanwhile our work in Romainia continues, with concerns about food production due to a long drought. The glut of apples which we were happy to help distribute last year is likely to be replaced by the collapse of the harvest this year, and a grant we received for food security is being used for hauling water to irrigate crops. Agents of Change’s 30 years of experience and partnerships continue to be put to good use.
Life on the farm at Saveni
Agents of Change’s area of work is with people with special needs, and that has been our starting point when relating to Ukrainians taking refuge in Botasani County in Romania. The local Deaf Association helped an early group of families and individuals who are deaf or deaf/mute to settle for a few months at what used to be a collective farm near the town of Saveni. It’s still a working farm, now owned privately, and some unused outbuildings were quickly converted into accommodation. There have been changes within the group, with some people moving on to other countries or finding it easier to live with Ukrainians in other temporary settings. Being thrown together with strangers to live communally in a strange country has its own stresses. Agents of Change’s role is to visit, encourage and respond to the concerns of the day. A friendly face and a warm hug are essential parts of communication when translating from spoken or written Romanian into Ukrainian sign langugage and back again. Our founder is shown here second from the left with some of the Ukrainian people living on the farm.
Old and new friends
Having worked in Romania for over 30 years, with a focus on people with special needs, Agents of Change have built up relationships with a whole range of individuals, especially the people who have spent their lives in institutions. One of these is Cristi who we first met many years ago when a team from the Scottish Fire Service were volunteering with us in the aftermath of the fall of the Ceausescu regime. Over the years the team has kept in touch and sent cards and gifts which we’ve passed on to Cristi. Visting hasn’t been possible for the two years of the pandemic, so our Trustee and medical volunteer who are in Romania for our response to Ukranian refugees took the chance to visit Cristi and give him cards and some pocket money from his Scottish friends. His situation has improved considerably now that he has been moved to a new rehabilitation centre at Trusesti, 50km from the county town of Botosani. It is a light, well-equipped facility with staff who clearly care about their patients. This contrast with the state of the institutions prior to the pandemic is seen elsewhere too – there’s been a positive shift during lockdown. With improved facilities and resources has come a new motivation for staff, who interact much more with the patients than they did previously. Cristi has his own locker and is able to keep personal items safe, which is far better than how things used to work.
A Ukrainian family have been settled at the same centre through the Botosani County Deaf Association, so they were visited too. An elderly man with diabetes, his daughter, and her husband who is deaf and dumb were given two rooms there, because the older man needs long term nursing care. They’re glad to have found a stable place to live, where the pet cat they brought with them is also welcome. The next step is for the younger man to find work in construction, having been a welder in Ukraine. The family enjoyed an afternoon out for coffee with Agents of Change.
From Odessa to Saveni for safety
Agents of Change are in touch with seven women and six children who managed to leave Odessa in Ukraine and reach the border with Romania. They have found temporary shelter in a cinema in Saveni in Botosani County. One of the older woman arrived with a badly broken leg so has had two trips to an orthopaedic surgeon with a medically trained Agents of Change worker. Her original cast has been changed for a shorter one. 
The refugees are being provided with meals by volunteers from the Mayor’s office, as there are no cooking facilities in the cinema. A visit to town with Agents of Change for dental check-ups gave an opportunity for extended time at an outdoor cafe where they could get fresh air and access to sim cards to try and contact relatives still in Ukraine. Efforts continue to admit the children to school in Saveni.
Doing something gives meaning
Readers of these news updates will remember the group of Ukrainian refugees and their animals who have found temporary shelter on an old collective farm near Saveni. They are men, women and children with a large proportion of deaf people amongst them. Because the men are deaf and/or mute and exempt from military service they were allowed to leave Ukraine. Some of them drove their families across the border in their own vehicles. Thinking ahead, they brought spare parts with them. This means that they are able to be drivers for one another and other refugees who Agents of Change are in contact with. Trips for groceries and taking people where they need to go become possible – and they are delighted to have something to do. Otherwise being a refugee becomes a life of limbo, worrying about family back in Ukraine and wondering where the refugee families will end up. So cars with Ukrainian number plates make journeys in Romania with fuel bought with Agents of Change funds.