What is project hope?

Project hope is about helping a Roma community to help themselves.

We at Cry in the Dark refuse to believe that a generation cannot be helped! We believe in a God that cares for these people just as much as anyone else God does not discriminate and neither do we.

We have been visiting this community for over five years now and we first went there through our community Hospice program as we had a patient living there. In the past few years we have intensified our visits through a Youth in Action program funded by the EU and run by our partner organisation Asociatia Lumina.

Through our Micro- gap program, one of our Christian summer volunteering opportunities, we were able to increase our visits and provide new programmes for the community. One of these programmes was the ‘Beloved’ course for girls which teaches them about self-esteem. We were also able to provide an open air kid’s club church each summer which has been attended by up to 60 children each week during the summer. Over the last few years we have taught the children about God, the Ten Commandments, the fruits of the spirit and some simple parables. We plan to run this each summer with our Micro-Gap Students.

During another of one of our Summer mission trips we were able to provide a bridge to the main well in the village. Until this point it had been a mud pit causing endless problems to the families living in the village and also leading to contamination of the water. With the new bridge in place it is now much safer to collect water and less mud and filth is being put into the well.

The future Plan.

The Mayor of Blagesti has given us his approval of our work in the community and has said we are right in starting with the young people he has also donated us a piece of land for us to use and possibly build on in the future.

Annually we carry out a demographic study by going to each house and gathering information about the children in the community. We now know that out of around 900 people just under 700 of these are children aged from birth up to 18 years.

In the future we would love to be able to provide a community centre for the families living in this village. Until this is a possible we will continue to support the community by running activities for the children, helping with small practical projects that benefit whole families and providing personailised Christmas Shoebox gifts for every child under the age of 18 living in the village.

Working with Project Hope is possible through a variety of different volunteering options, including voluntary work throughout the year and Christian summer volunteering.