Our team is really excited about a beautiful article called “All Oscar’s Men” that just came out in Libertatea, one of the main national newspapers in Romania! We are really proud of Oscar, Melinda’s assistant emergency psychologist who happens to be a giant stuffed monkey, and all of our team here working with Ukrainian refugees on the Romanian border, thanks to funding from CARE France, which supports Oscar and Melinda’s psychological interventions. NRC (the Norwegian Refugee Council) funds the rest of our AMURTEL team which provides site management support to ISU, the branch of the Romanian government that coordinates the disaster response.
The article was written in Romanian, so I’ve provided some translated extracts for you here! The article was written by Maria Andries and the photography was done by Dumitru Angelescu. There’s also a video (in English) that is really worth a watch:
“Oscar is a big stuffed monkey who makes the children passing through Siret Customs laugh these days. Adults cry when they see him. I didn’t understand why, so I asked an Ukrainian mother. She replied that she was impressed that we were doing our best to make their children smile again. She hugged me “, says Melinda Endrefy, our emergency psychologist at AMURTEL Romania.
“When he is not amusing the children, Oscar sits in the office container where all the work of the Siret Customs volunteers is coordinated. After the first chaotic days, NGOs, volunteers, firefighters, and police began to work as an organised team.”….