In 1990 a televised appeal for aid for Romanian orphans led 10 volunteers to set up the Biggin Hill Romania Group. Fifteen years later they are still involved in saving young lives and one volunteer's name will live on forever. TIM ASHTON reports ...

WHEN dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's repressive rule over Romania came to a bloody end in 1989, the western world finally saw the truth of the country's poverty and suffering.

This was expressed in no small part in the faces of around 150,000 Romanian orphans living in deprived conditions.

Television pictures showed the children, some as young as two, to be malnourished, neglected and living motionlessly in dirty cribs.

Children with learning difficulties were chained to radiators for several hours a day. It was these pictures which triggered the formation of the Biggin Hill Romanian Group (BHRG) in April, 1990.

Chairman Sandra Dolan said: "The teenagers were dressed in rags and their heads were shaven.

"They were so emaciated one could not tell the girls from the boys. It was quite horrendous.

"They were in an empty room and had the same dazed expressions we saw on the faces of people being released from concentration camps after years of hunger and cruelty. The pictures shocked us deeply."

HISTORY LESSON

The Romanian orphanages came about through Ceausescu's desire to double the country's population to create the Romanian Workers' Army.

Ceausescu ordered all Romanian women to have five children by the age of 45. Mothers who had 10 children were hailed as "heroic mothers".

Contraception and abortion were illegal and parents unable to support their children handed them over to be raised by the state, believing the authorities could do a better job.

Initially the BHRG, based in Flamborough Close, Biggin Hill, intended to relieve the distress of the sick and handicapped children but its work moved on to include distributing aid to hospitals, dental surgeries, schools and churches.

Mrs Dolan said: "Our success is not only measured in the improvements in children's lives but the fact Romanian authorities are gradually now acknowledging everyone, no matter what their limitations, has the right to a decent quality of life."

In 1997 the BHRG opened the Robert Cole Centre in Comanesti, north east Romania, for children with special needs.

It was named in memory of a Biggin Hill volunteer who died in a tragic accident during a trip to Romania. He was 24.

Mrs Dolan said: "Robert was lively, handsome, energetic and had a good heart.

"After his death we established the centre as a memorial to him because it helps the children he was so fond of. The centre is a really marvellous place."

Vice chairman Adrian Woodroffe, who moved to Romania and now works at the centre, said: "When the centre originally opened in 1997 just 14 children attended lessons.

"Now we have 74 children in addition to external children from mainstream schools. They come for physiotherapy or speech therapy."

The group is run entirely on charity. Mrs Dolan said: "The BHRG committee is made up of volunteers and since no one receives a salary and our administration costs are kept to a minimum, almost all of the money raised goes directly to supporting our various projects.

"The running costs of the Robert Cole centre are met partly by a child sponsorship scheme whereby sponsors donate £10 a month and they receive pictures, paintings and photographs of their sponsored child, together with updates on their progress."

To offer your help, email the BHRG on bhrg@lineone.net