Moldova: Helping the Deserted Children

When Anna was nine her mother left to look for work abroad

MOLDOVA - In Moldova, one in six adults has left to work abroad and the children they abandon become rich pickings for human traffickers.

Anna is 16. She lives alone in a ramshackle cottage with a cock and a hen called Romeo and Juliet.

She has a small scrap of land where she grows vegetables to feed herself.

"What I missed most in my childhood was toys and the warmth of my mother. I never felt I was loved," she says.

Anna's father has disappeared. Her mother went to work abroad when she was nine, leaving Anna and her 11-year-old brother under the eye of a neighbour.

But when her mother failed to send money home, the neighbour abandoned the children.

Their mother was away for two years.

"We didn't even know if my mother was alive," says Anna. "There were times when we didn't even have bread in the house."

Anna received fire wood and food from her school and the local mayor's office.

Each day a child under the age of seven is abandoned in Moldova.

Youngsters left alone because their parents work abroad have swelled the ranks of orphanages by 10% in recent years.

One in nine children is living with just one parent, relatives or a distant neighbour.

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