Orphans International (Oi) is an organisation working to bring good news to the orphans and poor, the oppressed and those in despair. We exist to help them have a better future, knowing that they are loved, and that those of us more fortunate do care. Registered charity number: 1146781
About Us
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Summary
Our Projects
Romanian Orphange
Oi has formed a fruitful and lasting relationship with Hand of Help for over 20 years. It is a privately run Orphanage and is now home to 48 Orphans from young children to up to 18 years old. Oi supports them in the running of this home as well as providing financial means and support in the form of regular visits, provision for the children to have a yearly holiday together in Romania in the mountains and day trips. We are now in the process of moving all 48 children into newly built houses where 12 children will live in each home looked after by House Mothers. This has evolved due to the change in EU and Romanian legislation regarding Orphanages and the new requirement for Children to be brought up in homes and not large institutions. Our new need is to be able to furnish all these 4 new homes for the children to move in by Jan 2025.
Romania
After Schools Project
Oi has made it possible for 50 children in academic crisis to participate in this programme supervised by two qualified children social workers. From Monday to Friday they have attended our facilities for a daily meal provided all year round, and received after-school support with homework and tutoring as well as supervised free time playing games. This project is a life line to keep children in school who are struggling due to abandonment issues and poverty. This project is run in collaboration with the Schools Inspectorate and Local Authority for Child Protection and Schools. Oi also provides financial support for one social worker.
Romania
Stepping Stones Apartment
Stepping Stone Homes for young adults, when leaving the State and Private Orphanage at the age of 18. These apartments provides a home for eight / ten girls for a minimum two-year period in which they can learn to become independent. They learn life skills such as financial budgeting, cooking, running a household and many more before embarking on their future lives. These safe homes have helped prevent girls being trafficked or exploited that have come form the State Orphanage system. Oi has assisted young adults in finding jobs and or paved a way for them to continue their education going to University. This project is monitored by our worker on the ground.
Romania
HIV Support
Oi has befriended girls from the State Orphanage for over 18 years. These innocent children were infected with HIV due to medical unsterilised needles being used on them as youngsters. They are marginalised due to their illness and will not be given jobs due to their diagnosis. We have helped them with providing financial support and accommodation. Oi has developed long lasting trusting relationships with them helping them not to feel rejected, despised and ostracized. We are in contact with them weekly and there for any support they need and enjoy taking them out when we visit them in Botosani.
Romania
Ukraine
Since the war started in Ukraine there has been huge loss and suffering. Oi has visited south west Ukraine in 2022 and 2024 supporting numerous displaced people with humanitarian aid; clothes water food medication and emotional support. We have partnered with a Bible School which has been closed due to the war and has now become a Humanitarian hub that reaches deep into the easter war zone. They administer humanitarian transport and organise convoys delivering aid into these dangerous areas. They organise transport for groups of individuals from the front line and occupied territories to move back into safer areas in the south west where they can be housed and assisted having lost everything. The Bible School has opened its rooms to refugees where they are looked after. Oi is assisting them and we are currently looking to help them with funds to finishing and insulating this building pre winter that is housing these refugees and to start ordering firewood reserves for winter for distribution. Oi visited them in April 2024 handing out food parcels to 250 Ukrainians.
Ukraine
War Orphans Education Project (WOEP)
Since 2005, our vision has been to impact lives through education in a war zone in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and in doing so bring lasting change to people and communities in the DRC. WOEP exists to bridge the gap and help orphaned children access education and build a sustainable future. Our local partners have worked to place girls and boys in good schools and look after them for the duration of their education paying fees, providing materials and medical care. This project has been temporarily suspended due to the death of our worker on the ground.
Democratic Republic of Congo
Our work in Romania
After the fall of Ceaucescu in 1989, the overcrowded Romanian orphanages became well know for their inhumane conditions and children in despair. Annabel Stoner, founder of Orphans International (Oi), returned home to the UK from her first visit to such institutions in Northern Romania in 2002. This experience impacted and touched her so much that she was determined to start an initiative aiming to bring hope to those neglected children and impact change. And so Oi was born.
Today, the situation in Romania has changed but it still is Europe’s second poorest country and the impact of poverty on families is devastating. Often children are institutionalised because their parents cannot afford to keep them. About 20,000 children are still living Orphanages in Romania today. Over 60.000 are still in care of the State. But what children need is one-on-one love, care and proper relationships.
Since Annabel’s first visit, Oi has formed a fruitful relationship with Hand of Help, a privately run Orphanage and home to up to 120 Orphans from babies up to 18 years old. Ever since, we have been assisting them in the running of this home as well as providing financial means and support in form of regular visits. We also bought a Stepping Stone Home for young adults when leaving the Orphanage at the age of 18. This apartment provides a home for four girls for a two-year period in which they can learn to become independent. They learn life skills such as financial budgeting, cooking, running a household and many more before embarking on their future lives. We are determined to help these young women in residence find work before they leave the apartment.
Oi also reaches out to the poor in Romania in many ways. We provide food parcels, pregnant cows, wells and financial support to poor families preventing further children being sent to orphanages.
In less careful times, many Romanian children, especially orphans, were infected with the HIV/AIDS virus through blood transfusions and reused vaccination needles. Many of them suffer discrimination in their communities, exclusion in school and cannot find work due to the stigma of their illness.
This is why Oi is helping young people with HIV/AIDS where we can, providing them with supplemental funding for nutrition so they can build their immune system as well as sponsoring accommodation and a yearly holiday to the mountains or seaside. We are currently working on ways of opening up opportunities of employment so they can actually live as normal a life as possible.
PLEASE STAND WITH US HELPING CHILDREN WITHOUT A FUTURE!
Apartment Project After Schools Project Children Donate Now
Our work in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Life is hard for the vast majority of children in the DRC. For the country’s five million orphans life can be even harder. This is the case especially in the DRC’s eastern Kivu region where children suffer the consequences of war, armed conflict and political instability resulting in tens of thousands of war orphans. The living conditions of these orphans are very poor. Most of them are illiterate and have no means to build their lives. Education, although known as a powerful instrument to reduce poverty and badly wanted by the people in the Kivu region, is a service the non-functioning state is unable to provide, especially for orphaned children.
It is because of this immense need that the War Orphans Education Project (WOEP) was born. Nelson Mandela once said education is the most powerful weapon, which can be used to change the world. Our vision is to impact lives through education and in doing so bring lasting change to people and communities in the DRC. WOEP exists to bridge the gap and help orphaned children access education and build a sustainable future. Our local partners work to place girls and boys in good schools and look after them for the duration of their education paying fees, providing materials and medical care. Because the programme draws children from all tribes, faith and ethnic backgrounds in the Kivu region, the project also serves as an important tool for social cohesion fostering much-needed reconciliation between conflict-affected, segregated communities.
Although located in a volatile region, we have run the WOEP project successfully for 14 academic school years from September 2003. The WOEP project has been growing with success: we nearly doubled the number of children in full education from 357 to 606 since the project started in 2003; however, 3000 more children are on the waiting list to be enrolled.
PLEASE STAND WITH US HELPING ORPHANED CHILDREN HAVE A FUTURE!
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