During 30 years, the Public Association AVE Copiii has been built step by step, with tens of children who represented the quality of the team’s work being raised. On the initiative of theater actress from Timișoara Mariana Petersel, who in 1990 came to Moldova with plays to help the children learn Romanian, immediately after the start of the Transnistrian armed conflict, the organization “Salvați Copiii” (“Save the Children”) was created and this later turned into AVE Copiii. The first actions were aimed at assisting and protecting children from the conflict zone. The organization contributed to the evacuation to Romania of 6,500 children from the Transnistrian region, whom it later brought home, when the hostilities ended, the organization’s founder stated in a news conference at IPN through videoconferencing. In the 1990s, Mariana Petersel considered Moldova urgently needed an association that would look after and raise children, especially because an extraordinary work team existed there and she could bank on it.
The Association’s executive director Mariana Yanakevich said that since the start of their activities, a team of devoted volunteers worked to attract funds and assistance for hospitals, schools and children. Hundreds of institutions from all over the country and thousands of families were assisted to overcome the difficulties, primarily those caused by poverty. Concomitantly, the first placement center for street children “Casa Așchiuță” was founded in 1995 and this offered care and protection to slightly over 1,200 children. There was instituted the social support service for refugees that was implemented between 1998 and 2017 and almost 2,000 refugee grownups and children from different corners of the world benefit from this.
The program of assistance for victims of human trafficking between 1999 and 2013 offered support in repatriation, rehabilitation and psychosocial reintegration to over 600 women, including girls, who were trafficked mostly in the Balkan area that was affected by conflicts then. Since the 2000s, AVE Copiii has been preoccupied with care alternative to institutional care. During the last four years, it has been focusing on assistance to young people leaving care services. Improvement of child protection capacities, investment in local professionals, safeguarding of children’s rights and direct support for the most vulnerable ones are only some of the measures taken by the Association.
During the pandemic, the Association housed medical staff that worked in the COVID-19 Unit of the Emergency Medicine Institute of Chisinau, offered basic assistance to over 200 children and young people and their families, ensured access to the Internet for 50 children and redistributed personal computers, laptops and mobile phones for facilitating their access to education. On February 24, this year AVE Copiii launched the project “Help – Ukraine Emergencies” for which over €600,000 and donations of goods for Ukrainian refugees were attracted.
On the occasion of its anniversary, the Association changed the graphic expression of its logo. The name of the Association was kept, but a Forget-Me-Not flower was added to represent reliability to the commitments undertaken three decades ago – protection of the rights of children and confidence in what they do. The blue in two nuances represents the color of peace, confidence, responsibility and honesty and the assistance and service for others, disinterested devotion.
AO AVE Copiii is a national, apolitical, noncommercial NGO founded in 1992 to promote the rights of the child. In 1995, the Association joined the International Social Service – an international organization with representatives in over 120 countries, which promotes the protection and wellbeing of children and families facing social problems as a result of migration. The Association’s anniversary is celebrated on March 27.
Note: IPN News Agency gives the right of reply to persons who consider they were touched by the news items produced based on statements of the organizers of the given news conference, including by facilitating the organization of another news conference in similar conditions.
