Natalie Hawkins, RN, remembers Miheala, a three-year-old girl she met while working with abandoned children at Tutova Hospital in Romania. "She had hydrocephalus and had never walked outside of her crib. We put her in a wheeled baby walker, and after two months she was walking unaided."

Hawkins, who hails from Parker, Colorado, met Miheala while volunteering on a two-week trip sponsored by Global Volunteers, an organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota, that offers short-term service projects in 20 countries. "We try to go where we are most needed," explains Michelle Gran, the organization's communications director, "and where we would be the main source of assistance."

Abandoned children in Romania are especially in need of help. Since the 1960s, when Romania's communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, forbade women with fewer than four children from using contraceptives and having abortions, the country's hospitals and orphanages have become notorious for their Dickensian conditions. Even 11 years after Ceausescu's 1989 assassination and the overthrow of communism, the number of children in Romanian institutions continues to increase. With approximately 125,000 children institutionalized, only 30 cents per child per day is allotted for shelter and food.

"There were three nurses for 35 kids," Hawkins recalls. This meant that more than 20 children-aged nine moths to five years-were kept in one playroom. "This was very overstimulating to the children and really caused them to act out," Hawkins says. "We separated the children into their own age groups and levels of development. That way, we were able to find developmental group activities that pertained to each age-specific group. Also, the children were less overstimulated, and their awareness of the two or three other children in the room began to increase." FIGURES (1-4)

Figure 1. Natalie Hawkins, outside Tutova Hospital.

Figure 2. Miheala in her crib at the hospital

Figure 3. Natalie Hawkins holds Madalenna, a Romanian orphan.

Figure 4. A child's bedroom in the hospital.

Hawkins also used her skills to develop documentation tools that will enable future volunteers at Tutova Hospital to track the developmental progress of their young charges. "Nurses tend to gravitate toward programs where they can use their professional skills," Gran said. "Nine percent of our volunteers are health care workers-and almost all of them are nurses." For information on Global Volunteers, call (800) 487-1074, or go to http://www.globalvolunteers.org.

Lisa Santandrea