Stories of Hope
Gabi's Story
Hi, my name is Gabi. My parents orphaned me at birth, in Romania. My childhood was spent living in an orphanage with 300 children. I am one of a few orphans that escaped from our predetermined fate, a life of failure.
I often reflect on my childhood as I am asked many times by many people, “how did you get to this point in your life?”. The short answer is because of my education. This is my story:
All of my early memories are of being in the orphanage. While there, I witnessed many kids older than me leave around the age of 18 and fail. They would end up on the streets and come back hungry and dirty. I remember many of these kids, who would be between 18 and 20 years old, they would come back to the orphanage and be in tears because of their failure to survive on their own. They had nothing and nowhere to go, so they returned to the only “home” that they knew, the orphanage.
One time as a Child, I and another 2 orphan kids, sneaked into the kitchen to take some potatoes and bread from the storage area. We wanted to give them to some of the kids that had returned. They were not prepared for this life and they lacked the basic necessities and skills to survive on their own, so they too returned. We had this overwhelming burden to help them as much as we could. We felt so sorry for them and could only imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes.
These moments were the most defining in my life. The fear of becoming like them made me think very deeply about my own future. I learned important lessons from their failures. It gave me motivation to want to take control of my life. The only way out this situation that I could find was to boost my education. And I was correct!
There was a culture of discouragement that existed concerning the education of orphans. This came from the years of failures of my fellow orphans. Most were not even able to complete high school, let alone to enter into a university. The most that the generations of orphans were completing was an apprentice or professional school. These schools had programs which taught you to become carpenters, painters, construction workers, etc. But these apprenticeship and professional schools were not enough to protect their vulnerable lives. They did not come with the life skills, wisdom or even the income that was necessary to survive. This was especially true in Romania, with decades of poor economies. Without a father or mother, Romania was not a place that assured a proper or safe life for anyone that did not have something valuable to start from, like a load of money or a good education. The guarantee of a normal life, with at least average conditions, did not exist for us.
With this culture of discouragement for orphans, I failed my first grade in school. I had to repeated it. I remember how much I was discouraged. Even my fellow orphans and some educators discouraged me further. But there was one person that was different, among few others, someone that I will never forget, Miss Ana Bordan. She was my teacher and she soon became my favorite teacher and even a role model. Even to this very day we are still friends. Miss Bordan would push us to study and never gave up on us! When we were unable to understand the concepts that we studied, she made sure that we found a way.
Through my success, I learned to believe in myself and it gave me hope for a better future. From that point, I and several others continued to get high grades in all of our classes, continuing on for years. This was all despite “being failures” during the first grade. And to think, all it took was one person to push us.
But the culture of discouragement did not stop with our success, it was actually magnified after that. I was bullied and made fun of because “I thought that I could be educated”. In other children's minds, I thought that I could be different than they were, this bothered them. But I was determined not to give in or quit!
Despite the discouragements that surrounded me I managed to go to high school, instead of a professional school. I did well enough with my studies that I was even able to continue on to a university in Bucharest. I worked hard and I was able to get a degree in Sociology and Social Work. I then went to the Netherlands on a scholarship and obtained a master’s degree in Comparative European Social Studies and Social Policy. This was then followed up with a second master’s degree in London in Data Science. I continued even further to work on my PhD in Social Policy, with focus on Children’s Rights and Religion. But sadly, even though I was far enough in my studies that some of my work was published in academic journal articles and was presented at a conference at Oxford University, I had to put my PhD on hold for the moment. This is due to a lack of resources/time restrictions and compounding frustrations.
Though through this process it made me the better person that I am today, this whole process was so very hard. Harder than it had to be.
Because I did not have the consistent support and encouragement that comes with a family. The whole thing was a huge challenge, with so many ups and downs. I struggled a lot with the distractions that surrounded my efforts to be educated. But I could not do what I wanted to do, only what I had to do. I could not rest when I felt like it, I had to be consistent, I had to work hard. I could not be afraid to follow this unknown path, I had to be fearless, maybe even reckless at times. When things would beat me down, I didn’t have a choice but to be resilient and to get back up again. There was even period of seven to eight months while I was studying in London that I did not have enough money to continue, but I made some serious sacrifices including with my food, and I continue. If I had stopped and given up, I would have failed, but this was not an option!
But even though I was severely discouraged at times, I found that my hope and my strength came from above. I came to understand that God would take care of me regardless of what stage in life I was at. This was no matter if I would succeed or fail in some areas. This was an important revelation for me that continued to give me hope and I believe to this day.
Today, I am a 34-year-old, a full-time data scientist for the Imperial College in London, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. I have come to a place in my life, with success and stability, that I could have never dreamed of, much less other orphans like me.
Without my education, and the grace of God, I would not be in the place that I am today. I would likely be like many of my fellow orphans, coming back in tears, begging for potatoes and bread from the kids that were “lucky enough to still be in the orphanage”.
I don’t know why I was chosen to be in this position, to have this opportunity, to have the right person at the right time to encourage me in the right direction, but I don’t want to be the last. Humbly, I want to be an example and a leader to help change this culture of discouragement. To let them all know that “We can do this!”.
I still have that same burden that I had as a child to help those kids, but my burden is to help give them hope and an opportunity for a better future!
Please help to give orphans a chance at successful life through a good education.
-Gabi Burcea-
Presley’s Story
Presley and Brian
Through a cultural exchange program for children ages five to fifteen from Eastern Europe, Bryan Harveston and his family hosted a special little girl who touched their hearts. Below, in her own words, Presley recounts the life she knew as an orphan and the impact her adoption into a loving and supportive family has had on her life.
“I was born in the wild place of Sortovala, Russia. My birth name was Katya and I was born living with a Mom who was an alcoholic. My Dad left when I was only a few days old. It was hard living with my Mom since it was never just the two of us. She always had different men over and it was hard for me to just be a child. When it was just the two of us she was never awake. Soon the alcohol became nonstop. I ran away to my grandmothers all the time. One of the hard things I was asked to do many times was to get alcohol for my mom and her boy friend. She chose to spend her money on that instead of food for us. One cold winter night when I was 5 years old, my mom and her boyfriend wanted some wine from the nearest market. My mom gave me money and told me that they wanted to get some wine. I went off to the market to get the wine just like I did so many times before. This market also sold meat there. I really loved their meat. On my walk there I was thinking how hungry I was. When I got to the market and looked at the wine, I asked the lady working how much the wine was and she told me the price. I was so hungry so I asked how much bologna I could buy with the money I had so she showed me the amount. I decided to buy the meat instead of the wine but was so scared of how much trouble I would be in. I walked out of the store crying and tried to find a place where my mom couldn’t find me. As I was walking, I noticed it was almost morning. I was walking on a white bridge, eating the bologna and crying. I knew how much trouble I was going to be in once I went home. An 18 or 19 year old girl stopped by me and said where are you going and I said I don’t know. She said come on come with me and took me to the orphanage that she lived in. I met the leader that ran the orphanage who was a big man with a lazy eye. I couldn’t say his name so he let me call him the man with the eye. He told me I could stay there for a while so he said that I could go to my room and the first thing I asked was can I keep my bologna and he laughed and said yes. This was where my life began. There was lots of fighting, arguing and many other things that were scary in my Russian life. The things I had to do and experience are things that some adults haven’t and will never experience. The feeling of being unsafe was a normal feeling. I had to raise myself, teach myself all that I have learned. One important thing I learned is that even though my Mom made bad choices, that doesn’t mean that I have to do the things that my mom did and many other people did that have ruined their life with alcohol. Life is a work of art. You get to do whatever you want with it. You can rush through it and make quick choices that may not be part of Gods plan for you or you can take your time and see what God has put in front of you. Gods plan as usual worked on me. If I hadn’t made the decision to get the bologna instead of the wine, that led me to meet the 18 or 19 year old girl, that led me to get adopted by the best family ever.”
Helen’s Story
Through our strategic partnership with the Gladney Center for Adoption in Ft. Worth, Texas to help fund the OnTheirOwn and SuperKids programs for orphan children who will likely never be adopted, OAIF strives to bring hope to children who have never had a chance for a bright future.
Helen is one of eight special needs children under Gladney’s foster care program in Ethiopia who is enrolled in the Tikuret Lesetoch Ena Lehitsanat Mahiber (TLLM) child care center. OAIF’s gifts, in partnership with Gladney’s On Their Own program, allow this young girl to have the specialized care and treatment she needs to live with dignity, including: dedicated pediatrician and nursing care, therapeutic massages, basic dental care, nutritious meals, and medications for her particular needs. Helen says that she “loves going out in the sun every morning to play with my very own special nanny [nurse]. She tells me I am pretty and helps me eat good food and tells me I am a good girl!” With proper care and developmental training, there is reason to hope for Helen to be adopted one day. In fact, one of her fellow classmates in this special program, Teferri, was recently adopted!
Juan’s Story
Juan, a young boy from Bogota, Columbia, is a beneficiary of OAIF’s partnership with another of Gladney’s adoption outreach programs, Superkids. Superkids is a humanitarian aid initiative that provides developmental screenings, caregiver training and adoption advocacy on behalf of special needs children such as Juan, who are candidates for inter-country adoption. OAIF’s gift supports a volunteer team of two physical therapists and one child development psychologist, who together screen special needs children at the Fundaternura, the Hogareo Luz y Vida and the Casa de la Madre y el Nino orphanages in Bogota. Little Juan is one of the 27 orphans identified by the team earlier this year who is ready for an inter-country adoption. Our team helps put these kids on the fast track to adoption. Juan says that he “wants a mama and a papa of his own,” and he thanks “the nice lady who helped me learn new words and gave me fun tests and made me laugh!” Happily, two of those 27 children have already been adopted, and it is our hope that Juan will find his very own family soon!
