The Austrian organization ‘Concordia’ (www.concordia.or.at/concordia_en/) has opened many soup kitchens and
social assistance centers for youth and elderly in many locations throughout Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria. They opened a soup kitchen for
the elderly in my village; currently 35 elderly people eat two meals a day,
five days a week at the kitchen. The
main goal is not onlye to feed the elderly, but also give them a social network, host
activities, educational events and other things to give the elderly that generally have
no family something to do.
I have started to work with this organization's branch in my village a little bit; we are
currently working on finding funding to renovate part of the kindergarten to
house the soup kitchen. This move is so
that the kitchen can be in a central location in the village, to expand so that more events can take
place and because it is a Concordia regulation that the building must be
owned by the village, currently the soup kitchen is temporarily using a
church’s facilities.
The Peace Corps volunteer that lives the closest to me works with a
Concordia soup kitchen in a village about 3 kilometers away. Their soup kitchen feeds about 70 people a
day and is located at the local hospital.
They recently completed a project to repair and paint the walls, install
two showers, install a washing machine and install a few benches outside of the
entrance. This may seem like a little
project, but many of the poor elderly do not bath or wash their cloths due to
the poor conditions of their homes. So
this project will have a huge affect on the hygiene and health of the elderly
in this village.
Due in part to Moldovan custom there was a celebration at the
completion of the project. People from
the village and neighboring villages came to celebrate. Children from the school danced, sang and put
on a skit about hygiene. The mayor also
spoke and some representatives from the funding organizations also came.
It was quite exciting to be a part of and share the in success of the
project. It is always great to see how so many people work together to make a project like this possible.
*These photos are from the celebration at Concordia’s soup kitchen at a neighboring village
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