“Today’s mother is child’s tomorrow reflection”

Only if mothers are being helped today, the little ones can get to know the joys of childhood.

The current social environment in Romania encourages many young mothers to abandon their newborns in the hospitals and not only that. This poverty-based uninformed and inexperienced environment is leading mothers to be ready to give up on their children just like Hagar, Abraham’s servant from the Old Testament.

Hagar’s example, though it happened 4,000 years ago, is more current than ever in Romania today. The history repeats itself and it is just as painful and loaded with teaching, like no time passed by since then.

The illusion of abandonment, the easiest and fastest resolution for one’s troubles, is the main cause of circle of unending problems. We try to change a mentality that does not have many chances to be replaced.

The Hagar Home Maternal Center Program gives to the young mothers an alternative to the abandonment of their own children, giving them a shelter, material and psychotherapeutic support until their situation is resolved.

Hagar Home is a soul project providing the children and mothers with a shelter, food, safety, medical care, medicines, counseling and an encouraging warm environment, together with a basic educational program, so that the children might integrate in the community as independent and productive people.

“Together, the child and his mother are the arteries that make the heart beat. Touched Romania sustains the family, the necessary home to tomorrow’s beautiful and responsible adults, shows Natasa Ungureanu, the executive director.

Miruna, 17 years old

Miruna is a student in 10th grade who has a 7-month child. She came to Hagar Home when she thought all had ended for her, with an unwanted child in her arms, no family or friends. “I was thinking of abandoning the child in the hospital” she tells us, after she initially had been advised to have an abortion even if it was too late for that. At the Caritas maternity a social worker told her about Hagar Home and she accepted our help. Now she is back to high-school, she learned how to be a good parent and she lovingly cares for her daughter. She is enjoying her child and doesn’t imagine life without her anymore. At Hagar Home she restarted trusting people and life and she thinks about the future. She wants to find a job to be able to sustain her child.

Izabela, 24 years old

Izabela lived in a village orphanage until finishing high-scool, deprived of a family warmth and support. She liked to study and she was making plans for the future until an unfortunate incident changed her life.

As a result of this she had an unwanted pregnancy and at the same time she found herself alone in a decommissioned hostel with no windows or heating system. She stayed there for a few months endangering herself and the baby. A friend told her about Touched Romania and the Hagar Home Center, urging her to ask for our help. Izabela came from the maternity straight to Hagar Home with her little child. A difficult childbed time followed and it seemed Izabela’s recover was stagnating. The caregivers had to be very caring with her, loving and patient in order to help Izabela recover.

Today, Izabela is a strong and careful mother that wants to give her child that which she never had, a family.