Photo: Lumos Foundation
Milena Malanciuc was just five when she was sent to an orphanage filled with adults and 200 or so children in dorms of around 12. “On that first day, I just sat crying and calling for my mother, who never came.” Her mother had died in the hospital. After a year in that orphanage in her native Ukraine, she was transferred to one in Chisinau, capital of neighboring Moldova, before she was adopted by Irina Malanciuc who was working at the Republican Baby Home. Moldova, which inherited a system heavily reliant on institutional child care, has been working over two decades to build new social support systems for disadvantaged families and single mothers around a network of compassionate foster families. Today, only around 700 children remain in orphanages. By 2027, the goal is to have none. The nonprofit Lumos Foundation has set up six new early child development and intervention community centers and seven early education facilities, and plans to launch 24 more centers. It has also collaborated with local authorities to reintegrate 1,100 institutionalized children into a family environment, either with their birth family or an adoptive or foster family.
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