EveryChild Moldova is implementing promotion and fundraising campaign “Help me to stay with my mother!” to support the social accommodation for mother-and-baby couples (parent and baby unit).
The social accommodation was created within the project “Abandonment prevention at birth”. It is situated in 2 Valea Crucii St., apt. 1, Chisinau, and has in placement parents with their newborns and pregnant women in the advanced term of pregnancy, at risk of abandoning their babies.

The Centre can offer shelter to four couples simultaneously. The placement is temporary, not exceeding 6 months (term that is necessary for the team of the Social Accommodation to collaborate with the beneficiary’s native community in order to find reintegration solutions). The age of the children, placed in the Centre is 0-3 years, except their elder siblings. The Centre offers family-based services, such as social, psychological, and legal assistance, care and education. The goal of the services is to ensure reintegration of the parent-and-baby couple into the family and the community.

This type of services is unprecedented in the Republic of Moldova, as it has half-independent structure. We highly appreciate the status of independence we offer to the couples placed in the Centre, because we believe in the capacity of the parents to take care of their own children. We tend to offer an environment as close to family as possible, and we insist on building parental skills and mediating their relations with their biological families. In this project, EveryChild intends to create a new service to prevent child abandonment at birth in the Republican Maternity Hospital, and to raise public awareness regarding the phenomenon of child abandonment at birth in the Republic of Moldova. As a result of this service’s activity, in 2008, 87 cases of child separation from parents were prevented.

We are kindly asking you to support us in cash or in food or hygiene products, for us to be able to continue delivering this service. It is important to mention that any form of donation is welcome, and we guarantee transparency in the fund-raising process. Please find attached the list of necessary products.

 According to statistical data, annually in Chisinau Municipality about 100 newborns are abandoned. 50 % of them are abandoned in the Republican Maternity Hospital. 62,6 % of a total 650 children abandoned in 2002-2003, were left in health institutions – maternities and children hospitals, results of a UNICEF study show. Of the mentioned 650 children, 36,9 % were under four days of age at the moment they were abandoned, 75,2 % were abandoned at the age of under three months, and 99,1 % of the children were abandoned before they turned one month. The causes of this phenomenon are different, but in the majority of cases, the decision to abandon a baby is made due to several combined reasons, such as difficult financial situation of the family, expressed by the lack of adequate living conditions, lack of a steady income, incapability to meet the children’s developmental and nutrition needs, parents’ abuse of alcohol, lack of community services for the support of families with many children, lack of a demographic policy to encourage childbirth. Another very important reason is that young solitary mothers are stigmatized by the society.

The project “Prevention of child abandonment at birth” was implemented in collaboration with the Institute of Scientific Research in the area of Health Protection of Mother and Baby, and with the Municipal Department for the Protection of the Child’s Rights, with financial support by Andreas A David Foundation.