The Romanian Aid Foundation & Asociatia Neemia

In south Wales, materials continue to come. For us, packing consists of days spent in the shed continually playing catchup. we have five completed pallets ready to send to Billingshurst this week; this will give us space in our garage for the next influx.

After Easter we resumed our packing sessions at Horley Baptist Church on the first and third Friday of each month; we will still be able to receive donations on the other Fridays. The Billingshurst warehouse will be open to receive donations only by prior arrangement.

Now we have sufficient items in the warehouse to justify a load and we are planning for our next lorry to depart on the 20th April.

Official figures published at the end of March show inflation in Romania is currently in excess of 7%, some 3 times the EU average. Prices of food and services have risen rapidly and annual local taxes became due in March. There has been an adverse impact on our shop income as customers need to limit their spending on non-essentials.

Earlier in March we were introduced to a charity in Iasi which had a supply of imported clothing which is surplus to its current requirements. The quality of the items is good and hopefully it can replace some of the lost income from the shop as well as providing more items for donation.

We have received a donation of solar panels from a supporter in the UK, together with the necessary inverter and ancillary equipment. These solar panels will be installed at Casa Neemia and will allow us to supply the building’s electrical needs and to produce a surplus which can be fed back into the local supply grid.

This month’s featured photos

Room for more: Stacking up … Humble but highly productive … Loading solar panels

Spuds are us: A long way to go … Back-breaking work … Investing for a good return

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

Goods have been arriving in generous quantities. Starting from an empty warehouse in December we now have approximately half a load ready for transport to Romania. There is a pattern in the type of clothing that we receive; very often donated items are appropriate to the season which has just finished, as wardrobes are cleared for new fashions. As AN has some stocks of suitable clothing there is no immediate need for a transport so we will wait until we can send a full lorry, probably in May.

As can be seen in the photos below, most of the goods arriving at the warehouse have already been sorted and packed; this reduces the tasks at the warehouse to the procedures for weighing, wrapping and documenting the boxes. Consequently we have decided to make a small reduction in the opening hours at the Billingshurst warehouse. It will now be open to receive donations between 09:30 and 12:00 each Saturday.

The imminent arrival of Spring brings many changes, not least in the type of clothing and bedding that we can donate. Warmer weather will mean that the items remaining from our winter stocks will be put into storage and be replaced by items received previously and which are more suited to the new season.

We have continued to receive generous donations of food from two local supermarkets. In January we received items with a commercial value exceeding £9,900. This is an arrangement brokered by a nation-wide food bank and there are limitations as to how the food can be used. There is a lot of work involved in the collection and distribution of the donations, together with preparing the necessary documentation, but we consider that the benefits are worth the additional effort.

New statutory accounting procedures require our staff to learn new software; this adds to the demands on their time and energy.

This month’s featured photos

Deliveries: From the packing team … From south Wales … Arriving in Dorohoi

At Casa Neemia: Waiting for Spring … Ukrainian art … Donated potatoes

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, February, 2024

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

It has been said that ‘no news is good news’ and, on that basis, the resumption of our regular packing activities should be considered to be good news. We continue to receive sufficient donations to keep our teams occupied but there is still some scope for other volunteers to come and join in the fun.

Some new procedures concerning the export of goods will come into force later this year but hopefully all the bugs inherent in a new system will be resolved before we send our next lorry later in the year.

The new financial year will bring new procedures for fiscal controls in Romania; in particular it will become necessary for business accounts to be maintained electronically, using approved software. This will represent a learning curve for our staff as, to date, our computerised systems have been used mainly for keeping up to date with stock levels and donation records.

Two local branches of a national supermarket chain have continued to give us a range of food items that are nearing their sale dates. There are stringent requirements covering how we use these items, to prevent them being resold or raising any liability issues. We have established a separate procedure to account for how we distribute this food, these items are not included in our general reports about our aid distribution.

Following the start of the new year our activities generally revert to what we consider ‘normal’ so our photos this month are a reminder of how we shared some happiness at Christmas.

This month’s featured photos

• Recalling happiness at Christmas

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, January, 2024

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

We have reached the end of another year of preparing and sending items to help needy people in Romania. Including the efforts of our colleagues in south Wales, this year we were able to send goods with a value (in Romania) equivalent to some £13,500 in total. This is less that we have achieved in some years previously but it is more that we expected at the beginning of the year. These goods were donated to RoAF free of charge but transport and logistics costs have to be met so we are also very grateful to those who support us financially.

We were able to effectively empty the warehouse with the latest load. Our packing and loading teams had a small end-of-term celebration prior to Christmas but we have lots more items in the pipeline and there will be plenty for our volunteers to do in the next few months.

In December, AN enrolled in a nation-wide food bank scheme whereby a local supermarket supplies us with short-term food that is nearing its ‘best-by’ date. This is food that would otherwise be thrown away and it is given to us to pass on to families in need. There are strict rules intended to prevent the food from being returned to the public market, and some additional work is required but the benefits are worth the effort involved.

During the past year we made nearly 4,500 donations of goods to some 850 people. These goods came from the UK or were purchased locally using funds sent for that purpose. These figures include the sponsored Christmas giftbags containing groceries and some seasonal treats but do not include the supermarket donations mentioned above.

At Casa Neemia, our solar panels are making a worthwhile dent in the electricity bills. We now have the opportunity to monitor the residents’ electricity usage in their individual rooms and this too has led to a reduction of the bills.

Our house manager, Angelica, continued to provide stability and good cooking for our residents and an easily-recognisable Santa brought some presents for the Ukrainian children.

This month’s featured photos

• At the end of the year
• Fish, food and fun

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, December 2023

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

In south Wales donations of clothing have been arriving by the van-load. Meanwhile, the Horley team also has received plenty to keep them busy. Both teams have worked together to prepare the final load for this year which we expect to dispatch on 16th December from Billingshurst. The final day for packing this year will be 15th December and the warehouse will close after the departure of the lorry on the following day. Our usual programmes will restart on the first weekend of January.

We want to say ‘Thanks and God be with you’ to Nunu (photo below right) who will be moving on after several years helping with the preparation of the boxes at Horley. Nunu started helping when we had the garage in the centre at the back of the Court Lodge estate, so that is a good few years. He lived opposite, he turned up to see what we were doing, and stayed; he makes up the empty boxes, seals the full ones and generally helps. His last day with us will be Friday the 15th December, he will be missed.

At Horley the final packing session for this year will be on 15th December, our warehouse at Billingshurst will close after dispatching the lorry the following day. We expect to resume our normal programmes on the first weekend of the new year.

At Casa Neemia we have installed the donated solar panels and have bought an invertor and smart meter, and we have been able to reduce the electricity bills by a worthwhile amount. We are waiting on the necessary connection and approvals which will allow Casa Neemia to contribute our surplus back into the local grid supply.

The house is full once again as several people who were able to get summer jobs have returned for the winter. We have plenty of fruit and vegetables from the gardens, thanks to the efforts of the residents earlier in the year.

We have again this year received funding to purchase additional food for the most needy of our registered families. We will prepare gift bags containing a mixture of essential groceries and a few luxuries, together with some firewood where appropriate. This will be a very busy time for the AN staff in Dorohoi.

Throughout the year we have received donations of stationery, educational materials and assorted types of paper and card. These are very popular with Kindergarten teachers, in particular at this time of year, who use the materials to help them prepare their class activities.

This month’s featured photos

• Preparing the next load
• Resources

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, November 2023

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

 
Our UK teams have been encouraged by the response to the new packing season. Some new donors have brought items to the Horley packing team whilst in south Wales the goods are piling up. More packing volunteers required!

We are looking at sending a lorry on Saturday 16th of December. There are 12 pallets (half a load) ready now; we will send the load even if the lorry is not full as it is better for the items to be in Romania rather than stuck in our warehouses in the UK. Hopefully the weather will still be suitable for the journey. The 15th December will be the last formal packing day for this year.

In Romania we were very grateful to receive another load of aid items in mid-October. As we have come to expect, there was a slight hiccup with the documentation – on this occasion it was necessary to provide a certificate of EU conformity for the wheelchairs in the load. With goodwill on both sides this was resolved promptly but it does give an opportunity to emphasise that items need to be complete, clean and, where necessary, appropriately documented.

Our land at the warehouse has produced another valuable crop. this year it was sunflowers. The seeds were pressed to give several hundred litres of oil for donation to our needy families. The oil has been described as being of better quality than shop-bought alternatives and is highly sought after by visitors to the office. The pressing process also produces a by-product in the form of the flesh of the seeds; this is shared with households who are raising domestic fowl.

The pallets that are used for transporting the aid do not go to waste. Clean pallets can be repurposed to create sheds for firewood or livestock; broken pallets are offer to households for use as firewood.

Recently we received a request for an update on our activities. A report describing our activities during the first nine months of this year has been prepared and is now available on our website at https://www.roafan.org/report2023/.

This month’s featured photos

• Preparing the next load
• Resources

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news October, 2023

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

Another month is struck off the calendar and for many of us the holiday period is coming to an end. The start of a new school year is often a time of stress, not just for the pupils (and the teachers) but also for the parents who often face large bills for uniforms, stationery and the other peripheral items that are essential despite ‘free’ education. In Dorohoi we do still have some limited quantities of stationery and craft materials which we can pass on to kindergartens, reducing a little the expenses that teachers incur from their own resources.

The end of the summer also reminds us to start the preparations for the coming winter, beginning with tidying up the warehouse in Dorohoi and its grounds. Several of the residents at Casa Neemia helped with this task.

As regular readers will recall, earlier this year regulations were implemented which restricted the import of hand-knitted items. We did have some knitted items still in stock in our UK warehouse which we were able to pass on to a charity working in Uganda, where the items were warmly received. Not the outcome that our loyal band of knitters expected but a worthwhile cause non-the-less. Due to the productivity of our knitters in previous years we still have in Dorohoi some more blankets and knitwear which we will be able to distribute during the coming winter.

A particular matter for concern is the reduced level of income from the shop. The income from our shop underwrites most of the expenses of our aid distribution work; without it, costs such as fuel or salaries are more difficult to meet. We are no longer permitted to sell some items that were popular previously, such as toys, and the reduced range of merchandise together with the increased cost of living means that the shop has to compete more aggressively for the limited resources of our customers.

As is the case in many other parts of the world, Romania is suffering from increases in the cost of living. The national minimum wage is currently 600 Euros per month and an unusually high proportion of the private sector workforce is, officially at least, paid at that level. Directives from the European Commission are intended to raise food and energy prices to closer to western levels but policies to raise incomes are scarce.

Some low-income households do receive state subsidies for food, medicines and electricity but there are many who do not receive them. We continue to receive requests for help with living expenses but our ability to help is very limited. However, we are still able to provide clothing, stationery, bedding and household items from the UK together with some locally sourced food and crops from our land, all of which can help by reducing demands on a household budget.

Finally, a reminder that this week the packing team at Horley will be resuming their Friday packing sessions at Horley Baptist Church and Saturday activities at the warehouse in Billingshurst.

This month’s featured photos

• Knitted items get a warm reception
• Autumn tidy-up at the warehouse

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, August, 2023

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

We enjoy an Indian summer in the south of England. We also enjoy a very encouraging intake of clothing items at Horley Baptist Church on Friday afternoons. A lorry is expected to leave our warehouse in Billingshurst with a full load of 22 pallets of very good quality items, on 14th October. We are hoping that a further load in December will empty this warehouse before Christmas. A very big thank you to our friends in south Wales who sent us eight pallets of clothing, bedding and shoes.

It will be 34 years this Christmas since the Romanian revolution. RoAF and AN were formally established in 1998 to give a more structured basis for the aid work which had started in an informal way some 5 years earlier. Our first lorries, supplied by ParcelForce, joined the very many from all over the U.K. in sending help of every description, but now the world’s attention has moved elsewhere.

Back in 1994 the team installed a climbing frame in a village school then, some years later, a trampoline followed. The children have changed, the teachers have changed, the building has changed but those items are giving pleasure to a new generation of village children.

Next Saturday (14^th October) we are planning to send our next lorry-load of clothing and other aid items to Dorohoi. The lorry will be loaded at our Billingshurst warehouse and a few extra hands are always appreciated. Thanks are, of course, due to all those in various locations who have helped to prepare these items for dispatch. As is common now, there is some incertitude surrounding which documents will be required for this load – the procedures do not remain constant from one load to the next so this can be a stressful time for our team in Romania.

New laws in Romania are intended to address the import of rubbish from other countries but these also affect our loads. We thank God that people in the UK are still willing to demonstrate the love of God through supplying help to those in need despite the complications of doing so.

This month’s featured photos

• Preparing the next load
• Memories

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, September, 2023

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

The Romania authorities have announced the implementation of an EU directive which restricts the import of toys for children. Imported toys, including home-made items, now need to carry a ‘CE’ conformity label. As it is impractical for our teams to verify these labels we cannot now accept toys for donation. Most stationery is, however, still acceptable.

In Romania, the school summer holidays last for a period of around 90 days, from mid-June to the beginning of August. Traditionally this was to allow the children to help with the family harvest but, with much of the population now resident in urban areas, this is no longer common. Instead, students and pupils are invited back to school for supplementary classes or extra-curricular activities. For kindergartens and junior years these take the form of sports and crafts.

For a number of years, RoAF and AN have supplied some sports items, craft materials and educational equipment to some of the kindergartens in Dorohoi and in the surrounding villages. Without these donations the teachers would have to source the items locally, either at their own expense or asking parents to contribute. In that instance there is a risk that some children from poorer homes would not be able to participate.
View a special thanks on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lwtdKxg2RF0

During July AN sponsored the purchase of some chickens for a family in Vaculesti. Having these chickens will help the family to be able to prepare meals that are more nutritious. We were able to acquire a small quantity of frozen foods from another charity, for donation. Some of the maize from our land was milled into flour also for donation whilst the gardens at Casa Neemia produced a good crop of vegetables for the residents. A small pool allows the children there to cool off during the current heatwave.

Finally, a reminder that the packing team at Horley will be taking a break during August; the warehouse will also be closed during this month. Normal programmes for packing and the warehouse are planned to resume on the 8th and 9th September respectively.

This month’s featured photos

• Activities during July
• Summer distractions

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, July, 2023

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes

Packing is proceeding quietly so far this year; consequently the team has decided to meet fortnightly until after the summer break. The remaining packing dates at Horley are 23rd June, 7th and 21st July. A member of the RoAF team will be at the church on the intervening Fridays, to receive donations as normal. The warehouse at Billingshurst will be open each Saturday as usual, until the end of July. The normal weekly activities are are due to restart on 2nd September.

A further load was dispatched to Romania on 3rd June; many thanks to those who helped to prepare the goods and to load the lorry.

The latest consignment of aid has arrived in Romania with no difficulties en-route other than those that might be expected during what was a holiday weekend in much of mainland Europe. The load then had to be inspected by consumer protection officials and assessed by customs officers before being released for unloading. We have come to expect that the rules will change on each occasion, and this time was no exception.

With a bit of back-and-forth with paperwork and good will on both sides the load was released and unloaded by a joint Romanian-Ukrainian team. Romania’s strict rules have been introduced as a fight-back against the dumping of substandard items from elsewhere in Europe. After the inspections were complete the officers commented that they were impressed by the quality of the items that had been sent.

A joint Romanian and Ukrainian team was on hand to unload the lorry. As we have no capability for handling loaded pallets each pallet has to be unwrapped and the separate boxes carried into the warehouse. This gives us a more detailed idea of what the load contains and is an opportunity for the boxes and other items to be sorted according to content into specific locations in the warehouse. We are, once again, very grateful for the amount of effort that goes into sending these loads.

Children’s Summer Camp The camp at Voronet was closed for a couple of years due to COVID restrictions but it is open again this year. We are hoping to take some 30-40 children, for the period 26th June to 1st July. We have been offered generous sponsorship for the camp this year but, as with almost everything in Romania, the costs have risen significantly and that may affect the number of children that can go. More details about the camp are on our website here.

This month’s featured photos

• What goes in …
• … must come out
• Mobility aids, paper for schools, household tool kits

Last month’s statistics

Stats notes:
– Joiners are new registrants this month, Leavers are are those whose latest recorded donation was 12 months ago.
– Some households may receive more than one donation during a month (eg, repeat donations of food).
– Items shown as 0 or as “…” are awaiting final returns for the month.

 
Previous month’s news, May, 2023

This Month’s Prayer Notes

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Link to this month’s Prayer Notes