Twenty years of voluntary service spent helping the needy. Twenty years ago the Order of Malta’s Relief Corps in Romania was founded in 1991. Now the Serviciul de Ajutor Maltez în România (SAMR) has 23 delegations, 1,500 volunteers and hundreds of public and private supporters. Thousands of people benefit from its hundred welfare programmes, including assistance to the homeless, abandoned children, disabled children, meals on wheels and outpatient treatment for the non self-sufficient elderly.
The SAMR also organizes first-aid courses, runs an ambulance service and helps out with its volunteers during natural disasters.
The first twenty years of operations will be officially celebrated on 14 May next in Cluj Napoca, where the Order’s centre has been providing specialist therapies for children with serious neuromotor impairments since 1993.