Families for families
More than 10 souls found both a house and a home in Romania
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Anca Mușat has three children: Bianca (18), Ștefan (16) and Vlad (9). From the very beginning, all three have been involved in collecting donations and packages, both at home and at their schools.
About the youngest boy, Vlad, she proudly tells me that after he found out about the refugee children, he would tidy up his toys and say: "Look, Mummy, I can give this one away. It's beautiful, I like it very much, I played with it, but I want another child to have fun with it." He also started going through his clothes: "Look, this one has grown too short in the sleeves, but it's very good, we can give it away." And they would bundle them together and package them.
Then, one day, she was contacted by a Ukrainian family who was on holiday in Thailand when the war started. That's why they were all together, the whole family: mother, father, a baby and the grandmother of the little one, she recounts. The family had had enough resources to stay in Thailand for a few months after the outbreak of war. They had hoped, like most of their compatriots, that the hostilities would end quickly, but it had been several months since the bombing began. The family's resources were rapidly dwindling, their initial hopes of returning home were dashed, so they decided to come to Romania. "They asked me if I wouldn't like to host them under the 50/20 programe, which they then told me about. They had friends, acquaintances, staying in Romania with the help of this programe. And that's how we ended up hosting them" - she explains how she ended up hosting the first refugee family.
A host for ten souls
Since then, that family left, but Anca Mușat has continued to take in Ukrainian refugees. She has often chosen to take in disadvantaged families, single mothers with children, special cases.
At the time of our conversation, Anca is hosting ten Ukrainian refugees in two apartments she owns. One three-room apartment provides accommodation for the Hodină family: a young mother with three young children, who is also accompanied by her parents and another friend - seven souls in all. In another apartment, she is hosting a smaller family: the parents and a child.
We are talking about the Hodină family: the mother, Tatiana, came to Romania with four children - Olga, 18, Nikolai, 8, and twins Sasha and Pasha, 5. At the end of 2022, the eldest daughter returned to Ukraine to study - she is studying medicine in Odessa. Then came Tatiana's mother (babushka) and her partner, also retired. They live together and help with the little ones. In Ukraine they were in danger - they had health problems, and the hospitals and clinics which remain undamaged are understaffed and run without electricity and in conditions which are difficult to imagine.
