Danone Research Wageningen and Friedrichsdorf have chosen to support SOS Children’s Village of Hemeiusi in Romania and aim to donate € 25.000 to help the family strengthening program which prevents parents from abandoning their children.

About the project
The SOS Children’s Village of Hemeuis is located in the northeast of Romania near the city of Bacau. SOS Children’s Villages will extend the current buildings into a new family-based SOS village. The four current family houses will be refurbished and six new houses will be built. In total the village will comprise of ten family houses, staff accommodation, a community building and an administrative building.

At the moment a number of 24 young children and teenagers live in Hemeuisi. SOS expects the new community to be fully operational in the course of 2008. By that time 60 children can be given a new home and SOS family. A family strengthening program will be set up for the local community enabling families to stay together by giving them preventive support and stability in times of crisis.

Creating awareness

It is our mission to help vulnerable children and by creating awareness internally as well as externally we aim to raise the necessary funds.

Fundraising activities

The kick-off of this project took place on 14 December 2007 and during the Christmas party the first fundraising activity took place: a silent and live auction which generated an amount of Euro 4272.

Other activities:

• Employees donated their Christmas boxes (Euro 900)
• Sale of a gas chromatograph (Euro 4000)
• Easter egg sale (Euro 114)
• Hydro culture plants in the office were to be replaced and the old ones sold for more than Euro 200
• And many more… such as personal donations and a coin box in the canteen to donate your change

In the period to come we will organise a lot more to raise money for the children of Hemeiusi.

Also you can help us.
How?

Please contact the local Supporting Lives ambassador of Danone Research at jenny.hendriks@danone.com. Your help is highly appreciated.

Let us help the children in need, join us in SupportingLives!

Danone Research Project Team

The sponsors of the Danone Research SupportingLives initiative are:

Jenny Hendriks (local SupportingLives Ambassador)
Corrie Vlastuin and Mirjam Govers