“Your cane, your cane!” Katja calls after Mr. Axinte from the door of the soup kitchen. Shaking his head, the old man turns around. How did he even manage the few yards without his cane? Is it because at his table they had been talking so much about earlier times when he was young and strong? The pots are now empty; the plates are being collected and washed. The women have begun to sing under the direction of the toothless teacher wearing the huge glasses with the yellowing plastic frame. So Mr. Axinte sits down once again and listens. Later some even try a dance. Today several canes remain leaning against the entrance door, the way home suddenly seems easier.

Katja has been working for hours already. She lost her parents when she was twelve, then a neighbour took her in, a rough drinker for whom she had to labour as a maid. She couldn’t even go to school anymore. Following his death she came into our “City of Children” and now she helps enthusiastically in the soup kitchen every day and she is close to finishing her training as a nursery school teacher. Together with a second helper she is now hoisting large pots of soup onto the carts. Many frail elderly people can no longer leave their huts; the young volunteers bring food to their run down houses and clay huts. When the streets are not sunken in mud, bicycles are also used so that the food can be distributed more quickly. The eyes of the lonely begin to shine when our young people enter their homes: it’s as though an angel has opened the door. And then it can happen that the elderly people pull out their nicest clothes and put them on. The outfits that they have been saving for their funeral.
We have set up seven social centres in Moldova until now; in addition there are 23 soup kitchens in the surrounding villages from which helpers like Katja can fan out every day to go to the abandoned and the bedridden. We can also take in some of the elderly who need nursing care. With the engagement of people like Katja new life is being awoken in the remote villages where there is not even a single job available. More and more volunteers join in to help and we experience how optimism is spreading. Then poverty is no longer fate; people feel new strength, they tackle a problem and help each other. Proof of the optimistic feeling are the small businesses which young people are setting up: One young girl founded a small beauty parlour in the middle of a poor area, two women make jam for the neighbourhood. In this way junctions arise out of which new threads emerge - networks of hope.

Moldova is the poorest country in Europe and it is in the midst of an enormous transition. No one knows how things will develop politically and economically. Dear friends, help us keep our network alive. Angela King, the leader of CONCORDIA Moldova pressures us daily with dramatic reports: “Don’t forget us!” With one euro per day young people like Katja can fill many bowls of soup, with one euro per day a person like Mr. Axinte can be pulled out of helplessness. Perhaps then he or she will also forget their canes leaning against the door to the soup kitchen – your help has given them strength.

Chisinau, Autumn 2009