Humanitarian Project Hetea, Romania

Every child should have the chance to get an education and every child should be able to seize it. Particularly those children from very poor and disadvantaged conditions need special support – Hetea.

Accompanied by Nadia Gavrila (OvidiuRo) and mayor László Kovács (Araci – Vâlcele), we reach Hetea, a small Roma community in Covasna county. About seventy families live here, with three times as many children. The children see us and follow us. From everywhere around they come running. They giggle and want to touch us. Their eyes are big and full of questions: “Who are you?”, they want to know.

Most of their parents are still children themselves. They invite us into their hut: a room made of clay and wood, covered with a straw roof. A bed, a table, buckets and bowls. A goat lying behind the door. Parents and children smile friendly. There’s four of them in the hut, and also the goat. “We are scraping through”, they say, “the winters are hard.”

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A door we want to open, I think.
Katharine Siegling, President of Never Give Up, Zurich