This October I will be taking part in the Epiphany Trust Mountain Challenge to raise funds for the Arc, a house in Romania which cares for four learning disabled teenagers who have spent the whole of their lives to date in an orphanage. Now at 18 years, they have to leave the security of the orphanage where, although institutionalised, their daily needs were cared for. They are learning to live semi- independent lives so that they will be able eventually to live “independently” in the community. Care in the community, whilst now common -place in the UK, is a totally new concept in Romania, which since the dark days of Communism has been struggling to cope with its abandoned child population.

It costs £1,500 per month to support the four young people in the Arc.

Although much has changed for the better in the last sixteen years, and Romania is at the threshold of becoming part of the EU, abject poverty abounds, and there are now frighteningly as many children abandoned in orphanages as there were at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

As well as visiting the project I hope to make it to the top of Mount Caraiman, which at nearly 3000m and twice the height of Ben Nevis I’m hoping should be a stroll in the park!

Many thanks for your support

Tom

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