Walking through this little Roma settlement, west of Oradea, Romania you can easily be overwhelmed by the terrible living conditions. During the rainy season the roads are practically impassable and children play in mud holes.

The inhabitants of this village, in the Bihur province, live in self-made mud homes, with no access to running water or any sanitation systems. Only a few of the men are employed and families exist from handouts.

COHEU has adopted this community. In the coming three years we would like to work together to make it a better place.

One of the goals of this project is to help integrate the inhabitants into the Romanian culture. We have set a number of objectives.

• Children are enrolled in school but through various reasons are not going to school every day. Our goal would be to have class attendance up to at least 4 days a week
• Almost all of the adults are unemployed. We would like to see that a minimum of 50% of the adults has a regular job.
• Improve infrastructure of village.

COHEU has planned the following initiatives to fulfill these goals:

• Dig a well in the city
• Install water filters in each home.
• Teach about hygiene and sanitation.
• Build a one-room community center that will serve as a church, after school project room and class room for adult learning.
• Start a model vegetable garden to educate on better farming principles.
• Create a gravel road.
• Build proper sanitation rooms including showers and toilets
• Help some of the inhabitants start and maintain a small business