Each day a child is abandoned by parents in Moldova. About 23,000 children are raised without parental care. Statistically speaking, abandoned children almost never find their biologic family. These and other data were presented on Thursday at an inter-religious conference on family and its role in the society. This is the first event of the kind to be held in Moldova, bringing together about 60 representatives of different churches and religions as well as NGOs from Moldova, Italy, Ukraine, and Romania. Oleg Paraschiv, Deputy Director of “Diaconia” Mission, the division responsible for social matters of the Metropolitan Church of Bessarabia, mentioned that unfortunately in Moldova a lot of children are deprived of their right to a family. The number of orphans and, what is even more alarming, the number of social orphans is on the increase. There are a lot of factors which influence the spreading of the phenomenon of children abandonment: unemployment, lack of material resources for raising, raising and educating a child, inefficient assistance policies, but also the selfishness and indifference of the parents. Citing official statistics, Oleg Paraschiv mentioned that in most of the cases the parents are those who want to see their children institutionalised. They address almost three times more requests than the local administration bodies, tutorship and guardianship bodies and other relatives. Only 6% of the children in boarding schools are orphans of both parents. Allocations for the maintenance of institutionalised children were of 11 lei per day, of which only 5 lei were meant for food. The children are short of clothes and shoes. Up to 16 children are housed in one room. They spend about 17 hours a day in the same room. But what they are missing the most is the safety of a family house and the love of a close person, Diaconia’s deputy director mentioned. According to the manager of Amici dei Bambini in Moldova, Valentina Purcel, a very serious deficiency of the public policies in the field is the fact that, after institutionalisation, there is nobody to follow the evolution of the parents who abandoned their children or who were deprived of parental rights. There are no specialised bodies to work with these persons in order to rebuild the family. Another obvious lack pointed out during the conference is the centralised administration of budgetary resources destined to institutionalised children. As a consequence, local authorities are not interested in the creation of alternative services and the policies on the residential system’s reform set by the central authorities are likely to fail. The Conference is organised by the Italian Association “Amici dei Bambini” and by the Social Mission “Diaconia”. The conference aims to sensitise the local communities to the phenomenon of child abandonment through the agency of clergy.