2006

This page reports on progress through 2006, in descending date order with the latest news first.

Introduction

In 2006 we have been helping FAST build a welfare centre for poor Roma children in Sacele, near Brasov.  We have been able to visit the four Roma (gypsy) villages around Brasov. We were saddened to see the poor quality of the housing and services, such as sanitation and water supply. 

We were also better able to understand how serious is the lack of pre-school preparation classes for the Roma children, many of whom can't cope with school when they start at age seven and drop out, perhaps to become street children.

The new welfare centre will address all of these problems. 

 

 

21 December 2006

Nearly Christmas Eve and FAST continues to work on the welfare centre.

15 December 2006

Despite the winter cold, a start has been made on constructing the toilet block extension.  As you can see it is quite big , not much less than an average UK house.  It has two floors.

October 2006

Our October team were shocked to see the dreadful conditions Roma families have to endure.  They were privileged to be invited into the home of a Roma family.  Five people living in a single room hut with a little dung-burning stove to keep out the severe winter cold.

  

At the Welfare Centre the STEPS team concentrated on insulating the building, with fibre-glass padding in the timber walls upstairs and foam insulation on the floor downstairs and on the outside walls.

Daniel hopes to have the first children in the centre before Christmas.  There is still much, much more work to be done.

Read the blog from one of the team members

September 2006

 

Geof Robinson, our Chairman, spent a week working on the welfare building in Sacele.  He and Daniel experimented with various techniques for fixing insulation cladding to the outside walls. These pictures show the boiler room at one end of the building.

August 2006

We have been able to send some money for materials to allow work to start on constructing the wooden walls and roof for the toilet block extension.

June 2006

The second team in early June 2006 continued work on the toilet block extension.  They dug trenches for the drains, constructed shuttering and reinforcing steel work for the foundations, and fitted a sophisticated burglar and fire alarm system to the entire building.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile a group of Romanian roofers constructed the wooden top floor and roof for the main building.

 

 

 

 

 

May 2006

Our first team can be seen in Sacele hard at it, digging out the foundations of the toilet block extension to the main building.  Before they left they had poured the concrete for the footings.

More details about this project