The Duke of Bavaria, a Princess, and OI Romania (2/06)

In August 2005, coming home from a trip to Indonesia, I had found a check in our mailbox for $20,000 from Duke Frantz of Bavaria to explore building an orphanage in Romania. I was flabbergasted. It turned out that a lawyer whom I had relied on during the Bali crisis was also the Duke’s attorney and had advised him to make the contribution. It is a small world indeed.

OI Patron Duke Franz of Bavaria waves to the crowd in 2003.

Slightly smaller than Oregon, Romania is perhaps best known for its beautiful capital Bucharest and the Transylvanian Alps. Its population is 22 million, of whom 45% live below the poverty line due to decades of dictatorship from Nicolae Ceausescu which began in 1965 and lasted until 1989 when he was overthrown and executed. A small number of Romanians (2.5%) are considered Roma, or “Gypsy.” Religions are varied, with the majority being Eastern Orthodox with 87%, Protestant (7%), Roman Catholic (6%), and approximately 1% Muslim.

Romania’s economic development lags far behind most of Europe. Per capita income is only US$7,600, ranking Romania 69^th in the U.N. Human Development Index, somewhere down around Venezuela, Brazil, and Thailand.

Romania is infamously known for its staggering amount of orphans, and its orphanages are among the worst in the world. The problem of Romanian orphanages began with the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. One of his goals was to spread communism by increasing the population of Romania to 30 million by the year 2000. He went to extreme measures to reach his population goal. Under Ceaucescu’s regime, every woman was required by law to have at least four children, which was increased a few years later to five children. Families that had fewer than three children were taxed heavily. Women were regularly monitored for pregnancy and did not become eligible for birth control until the age of 45. Importing condoms was an imprisonable offense.

The vast majority of children in Ceausescu’s orphanages are not actually orphans. These state-run “orphanages” were created to house the excess children that families could not support and abandoned. Orphanages were staffed by the smallest number of people who could keep the institution minimally operational, with no consideration given to the developmental needs of the children. Children in these institutions grew up without mental stimulation or physical activity, without any loving human touch, and often without sufficient food, clothing, or health care. Pierre Poupard, the head of UNICEF in Romania, calls these children “a lost generation.” They were closeted away from society, often malnourished and subjected to physical and even sexual abuse.

Conditions in the orphanages have changed only slightly for the better. Romania is currently experiencing a great deal of economic difficulty but is slowly moving in the right direction. The consequences of the nation’s many years of authoritarianism are lingering problems that will continue for a very long time. As Romania crawls from the rubble left after decades of communism toward a free market economy, many people are still suffering. International monetary organizations have reported that Romania has actually regressed economically during recent years. As a consequence of this economic downturn, many more children have been abandoned to the orphanages bringing their numbers to over 140,000.

Orphans International is committed to helping these children under a new plan developed specifically to deal with the orphans in Romania. In partnership with The Princess Margarita of Romania Foundation, OI Romania will work towards de-institutionalizing children from state-run orphanages so they have a chance to learn, grow, and become global citizens.

Thinking about what volunteers I had available to meet me for a tour of Romania, my thoughts returned to Boris Stankevich of Belarus. How far could Belarus be from Bucharest, I wondered? Soon I knew: two days by train. But he traveled the distance in February of 2006 to spend a week with me in Bucharest – through a blizzard – speaking to a host of specialists, including Ethan Hawke’s mother Leslie who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania and returned to head an NGO. We spent a wonderful day in her home.

HRH the Princess Margarita of Romania.

The most significant woman we met in Romania was Princess Margarita, who as coincidence would serve, was cousin to Duke Frantz. She welcomed Boris and me to her palace, and we got along extraordinarily from the first moment we met. The Princess was enthralled by our approach, and quickly made the decision that the Princess Margarita of Romania Foundation would partner with us in creating OI Romania. Although fancy myself good at making quick executive decisions, she stunned even me with her speed and resoluteness.

Following our meeting with the princess, we met with the Romanian Department of Social Affairs, and found another big-hearted person, Liliana Vasilescu, Executive Director of the Romanian Social Development Fund. She agreed to find three candidate villages meeting our needs in Transylvania. Our ideal village, we explained, would have a population of about 2,000, be made up of a cross-section of ethnicities, and have not only the need and desire but the necessary leadership in place to invite us to work there. Using the experience we have accumulated in opening our other projects, we have found certain universal issues that need to be addressed in each country, and we expect that they will be similar in Romania. The first important step will be to identify the appropriate village. Here we build up over time to a 16 hectare (40 acre) campus, either in one lot or scattered throughout the village. In each of our campuses we have become one of the largest local employers, and local leaders welcome us with open arms. One of the possible towns we looked at is Bontida.

Bontida is a typical village with dirt roads
located in the rustic Transylvanian Alps.

We hope to build four small houses for four adolescents each, for a total population of sixteen children aged ten to fourteen. The noted organization World Learning stressed the need to cater to a specific population, which we believe would be in keeping with our established model. These children are in the process this year of being de-institutionalized from large government-run institutions. The tentative working name for this project will be “Orphans International Romania in Partnership with the Princess Margarita of Romania Foundation.”

Our next step will be to return there and visit each of the villages, which we hope to do by the spring of 2007.

At the end of our first organizing trip to Romania, Boris Stankevich and I were particularly grateful to HRH the Princess Margarita of Romania, Corina Crangasu, Executive Director of the Princess Margarita of Romania Foundation, and Liliana Vasilescu of the Romanian Social Development Fund.

Best Western for offered their property to us as a Transylvanian base for our next organizing trip, Air France provided transportation from New York to Bucharest, and Hilton Hotel offered to provide us with furniture, bedding, and linens.

The story of Romania's orphans has been heard around the world.

We were grateful as well to Peggy Bates and Ioana Ciaunde Santiváñez of the International Women’s Association of Bucharest for encouraging us to apply for funding to cover washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators; Lucretia Moldareanu, National Director of SOS Children’s Villages for tentatively agreeing to assist us with the training of houseparents; the Japanese Agency for International Cooperation for agreeing to consider us for inclusion in their program; and the U.S., Peruvian, and Japanese embassies.

We would like to extended thanks to Adriana Stoica, Executive Director of the United Way of Romania; Malin Malineanu, General Manager of American Express Travel; Dr. Bill Saur, Executive Director of World Learning; Maria Sandor and Bill Seas of CHF; Leslie Hawke and Maria Gheorghiu of Asociata Ovidiu Rom; Hon. Bryan Dalton, American Counsel General; Hon. Ryohei Tobibayashi; Mike Costache, Director of the Blue Heron Foundation; and Attorney Tony Raftopol. In the name of each child, may I give them all a heartfelt thank you.

The Dominican Republic and the Office of the First Lady (12/05)

It is not often that an Ambassador from the United Nations invites you to his country to meet the spouse of the president. When this unlikely event does occur, it is best to drop everything and go. So I went, arriving in the Dominican Republic in early December 2005.

The First Lady of the Dominican Republic,
Dr. Margarita Cedeño de Fernández.

One of the dynamic women of the 21st Century, the First Lady of the Dominican Republic, Dr Margarita Cedeño de Fernández, met with our team to discuss the founding of Orphans International Dominican Republic.

Ambassador Lara-Peña met us at the airport and in minutes we were through Immigration and Customs. The Ambassador was firmly committed to the children of the Dominican Republic and had already established a project for orphans and neighborhood children in his own countryside hacienda. We were able to visit his project and were very impressed by it. The Ambassador’s project had stood the test of time and promised to continue long into the future. It featured a community health clinic, a computer laboratory, and homes for kids. In fact, it looked very much like an Orphans International project minus the international component.

Prince Albert Agrees to Chair Our Global Advisory Board (4/02)

Call me the master of the cold letter, but from White & Case, our pro bono legal representation, to His Serene Highness Prince Albert of Monaco, the head of our Global Advisory Board, I have been able to enlist much support through the power of the written word.

Prince Albert first sponsored one of the children in Haiti for $600 per year. I requested an audience with him, and as a Haitian child sponsor, he was entitled to a colorful key chain rack pounded flat from an old barrel and painted in vibrant hues, which I brought to him at our first meeting. I identified myself at the front desk of the exclusive Upper East Side hotel, and the next moment the general manager was beside me, asking me to accompany him. There were men in suits scattered throughout the lobby, carefully monitoring the guests. The manager used a key to get to the floor, and then unlocked another door. Security eyed us at each stop. We knocked at the third door and were let into the living room of the presidential suite, where I waited with my bright blue backpack containing the key rack. Prince Albert soon entered with security standing behind him. I had asked his assistant what to call him, and the assistant assured me that “Albert” would suffice, so Albert it was.

We chatted for some time about his American experiences and my work with Orphans International. Finally, I presented him with what I told him all Haiti child sponsors had received. The men standing behind him were rigid as I took the package out from my backpack, hands in their jackets watching me like vipers. He opened it up excitedly, and proclaimed, “Oh! I don’t have one of these in my palace!” He seemed truly appreciative. Several days later, I attempted to FedEx him a follow-up letter and could not enter it into the FedEx system without a postal code. I googled the Palace in Monaco and found the zip code – and the palace. It looked like Versailles and I could not imagine that the friendly guy I had met, who seemed in many ways as American as I, lived there. I realized then that I was going to make some friends in high places.

Orphans International Opens Doors in Haiti

Jacques Africot, our first OIWW-certified houseparent, was nearly ready to open Haiti House in Jacmel with children being considered from Mapou, where flooding had recently killed many parents, and from Mother Teresa’s hospital and a facility for handicapped children in Port-au-Prince. H.S.H. Prince Albert, Beatrice Arthur, and Peter Yarrow had already contributed towards OI Haiti.

“Haiti House” was originally set in Jacmel, but due
to problems with the board, we moved to Gonaives.

We had a neighborhood educational program in place known as Amis d’Orphans International (Friends of Orphans International) with an educational room set up with cut-outs and handmade posters. This program was run by Jacques Africot and served about 50 economically disadvantaged children living in the vicinity of our home in Jacmel. On one trip to Haiti, Pranav Gupta, founder of Development International, and I carried down an enormous assortment of educational toys and children’s books that had been contributed to OI in the U.S., as well as a donated tent and baby crib.

We set up the tent inside Haiti House with a large selection of colorful toys and the neighborhood children began to play immediately. The kids had been taught to sing songs and enjoyed their visit with us immensely. Educational toys donated by Beth and Eric Chernik proved to be a tremendous help and greatly loved by the children.

With two projects running smoothly now, in Sulawesi and Sumatera, I became increasingly concerned about the lack of progress with our third project in Haiti. We had attempted to recruit a board in the nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince, but we finally set up our home in Jacmel, a beautiful seaside town four hours to the south of the capital. Only one of the board members attended the opening ceremony. Due to the evident lack of commitment and interest of this board, I formed a new board made up of prominent leaders of Jacmel.

Unfortunately, this attempt to form a board proved to be as unsuccessful as the first! I had assumed the top people in Jacmel would be trustworthy, as they already had what they needed and would not attempt to use this partnership to their advantage. However, the president of the local Chamber of Commerce, the head of the local civic club, the mayor’s brother, and others all seemed to have only their personal interests at heart, and held our house hostage, waiting to get what they wanted. I refused to rent a far more expensive house belonging to one of them, pay them for their volunteered time, or hire their mistresses as staff. Because I refused to meet their demands, the house remained unused for two whole years.

By January 2005, I had enough. Hurricane Jeanne had hit Gonaives a few months earlier, and although not of the scale of the Tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, more than 2,000 had perished. There was great need in Gonaives and all we had in Haiti was an empty home in Jacmel. I flew to the Dominican Republic for a secret meeting with Phadoul Amisial, the human resources director for Haiti’s largest pediatric hospital and the director of the project in Haiti at the time. I did not want the Haitian board to know I was in the area. He crossed the border from Haiti by bus and we settled down for an entire weekend of talks. I proposed that he resign as director and form a new board in his hometown Gonaives where we could help children orphaned by Hurricane Jeanne.

Rose Nancy { XE "OI Children:Rose Nancy" } and Bernadine{ XE "OI Children:Bernadine" }, her “baby sister.”

At that time the road to Gonaives was still flooded, and the relief community was struggling to get fresh water and supplies into the devastated city. The director hesitatingly agreed, and three months later we signed a three-year lease for a four-bedroom home, our first campus there. In the middle of the night we removed all of the furnishings from the house in Jacmel and moved them to our new home in Gonaives. By October 2005 we were registered with the proper authorities.

In June 2006, 26 children attended the OI Haiti Orientation, with caretakers, board members, and staff swelling the participants to 47. Sixteen of the children seemed to fit OIWW standards and the caretakers began the application and documentation process with the Gonaives Department of Social Affairs. The caretakers were primarily aunts, uncles and grandparents who cannot afford to keep the children.

Careful screening continued for our children. The Gonaives Department of Social Affairs screened all documents to confirm that both the child’s parents were deceased or that one was deceased and the legally missing, as per OIWW Standards. In addition, a volunteer further screened each child, and our director traveled to the hometown of each child to seek further confirmation of documentation.

The OI Haiti Board in Gonaives, 2005.

According to the Associated Press, that year a rash of kidnappings for ransom was adding to the misery in violence-torn Haiti. An average of four people were kidnapped each day that summer by politically aligned street gangs, drug traffickers, crooked police and criminal deportees from the United States. This was part of what one U.N. official called “an urban war” to destabilize Haiti ahead of October elections to replace ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Victims ranged from wealthy business owners pulled out of luxury vehicles on busy streets to working-class Haitians snatched from poor neighborhoods. Foreigners were prime targets. U.N. officials reported that at least 130 people were kidnapped in Port-au-Prince in April 2005.

OI Haiti board president Phadoul Amisial wrote during that violent summer, just before Aristide fell, “Don’t worry about my safety. Inshallah, I will be fine. Violence is anywhere now and I cannot stop work just for the violence. I can die anywhere.”

The new board and several government officials, together with our new children, dressed in their Easter finest, attended our opening in Gonaives that same month, July of 2005. A brave delegation from the board in New York, led by Doris Chernik, and Jennifer Prince, participated. It was an emotional moment to witness five years of effort spent in a country with no government, no electricity, and no infrastructure to speak of, finally yield a home for our children. Today, twelve children live at OI Haiti. One challenge is their education. Sadly, they were several years below grade level in academic skills, and if we sent them to traditional school, they would not be able to learn to the best of their ability. We decided to keep them at the house and open a Montessori-type multi-age group class.

Children and caretakers attended
OI Haiti’s Orphanage Orientation in Gonaives.

The project, surrounded by a ten foot cement fence, also includes a preschool and an ecological center to assist our neighbors with reforestation in the wake of the terrible floods last fall. Situated in a 100 x 150 foot compound, the property was planned to eventually have more than just a home: a community pre-school, a public health center, and a community computer center. The interim campus will hold twelve children, and plans will begin following the opening to move to a larger campus where additional orphans may be cared for. The campus will focus on green architecture, especially solar power and composting.

Phadoul was OI Haiti’s first director, who left when he could not see eye-to-eye with the former board. Now, as the human resources director for Haiti’s largest pediatric hospital, he has returned to OI Haiti as its board leader. Jacques Africot, senior houseparent at OI Haiti, trained at OI Sumatera, where he also learned Indonesian. He has become expert in dealing with orphanage-related challenges and governmental relations.

Haiti House opened in Gonaives.

Within the next 15 months, OI will search for and buy up to forty acres of land in Gonaives at a reasonable price. It will then begin building three or more houses on the land, completing them before the present lease runs out in July 2008. The first three homes will be named for Vladimir Pierre Chernik, Rick Luce, and Frances Alleman-Luce

A ten foot tall wall protects our OI Haiti
Interim Campus on the man road in Gonaives.

Each of the older children has chosen a younger child to take care of as if the child were their sibling, combing their hair or doing laundry for them. The children also help keep the house clean and are ready to play their role in the house. They now behave better among themselves. Our houseparents have a close relationship with the children and with each other. They meet to discuss the use of constructive discipline in the house, prepare a weekly program for school, meet the children at night for an evaluation of the day, plan the next day, and read a story at night with the kids.

Near the Haiti campus of Orphans International,
OI children cool off from three-digit temps.

The delegation from America flew to Gonaives in July 2006 to meet with the local Board of Directors of Orphans International, review the educational program, and discuss plans for the future. They also brought some 80 pounds of French books donated by another Roosevelt Island resident, Raya Barut, and a dozen math workbooks donated by PS/IS 217. The workbooks will made it easier to individualize instruction – essential when the range of skill varies as much as it does here.

The children of OI Haiti pose for their
first “family photograph” on Day 1.

The primary school children will attend the local school; the pre-school children will be taught on the OI campus. A few local children will be invited to participate. Even the older children knew little more than the alphabet when they arrived at the orphanage in October 2005. Within a year, all of them could read and do math at 2nd or 3rd grade level. Even so, the older children will enter classes 1-2 years below their age-appropriate class. The plan is to move them forward with supplemental individualized instruction during the school term, with summer school this year and in the future.

Abigaëlle with Walter, her “baby brother.”

While in the area, the members of the delegation invited the children of OI Haiti to the hotel pool. The children were ready in minutes and jumped into the waiting truck, ready for a swim. There are the delighted shouts, laughter, squeals, jumping, and splashing of twelve happy children. Afterwards, we ate spaghetti and pizza. Unlike many American children, these kids had no complaints about ingredients, and were polite and appreciative. They didn’t ask for seconds but happily accepted them when they were offered. The day at the pool was as much fun for us as for the kids, and we hated to leave.

Orphans International Haiti has a working permit from the Gonaives Town Hall, has registered with the DGI (Haitian equivalent of the American IRS), and is in the process of registering with the Institut du Bien-Etre Social (Department of Social Affairs).