The Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC) approved at Thursday’s sitting, February 1, the opening of a Maternal Centre with a view to preventing child abandonment. It will be opened in the headquarters of the municipal special Children’s Home, situated on Cuza-Voda street in Botanica district. This institution’s mission is to temporarily protect mother-child couple, and support mothers that intend to abandon their children to integrate into the society. These mothers will have the possibility to profit from support of this institution for a period of three months, and in emergency cases – for 12 months. Here, they will benefit from social-medical rehabilitation services. Skilled persons will help the young mothers to develop their capacity to fulfil their parental obligations. At present, Chisinau has no other institution that would provide such services than this one. Besides the financial support provided by CMC worth 5,600 lei per month, this institution will be funded under a project by the Social Investment Fund in Moldova and by “Ai Bi” Organisation from Italy. According to City Hall data, the number of abandoned children in the municipality is significantly increasing each year. If in 2000 there were abandoned 156 children, in 2003 their number amounted to 263.