U. students to fundraise for homeless kids in Romania

After witnessing homeless Romanian children struggling to survive in sewers, a small group of students has decided to share the emotional experience with others at Penn. And starting tonight, in an effort to raise both awareness and money at Penn, the group has organized two fundraisers near campus. The first one will be tonight at 10 p.m. at Blarney Stone on Sansom Street, and the second will be next Monday at 10:30 p.m. at Smokey Joe's. The impetus for the philanthropy came when a group of students and faculty -- College sophomore Mary Braun, College sophomore Lincoln Ellis, College senior Lipika Goyal, Wharton Professor Etty Jehn and Annenberg School for Communications Staff Photographer Kyle Cassidy -- spent their spring breaks in Romania. Both events will provide more photographs and information from the trip and describing the present conditions. "You can party and be a philanthropist at the same time," Braun said. Cassidy first learned about the conditions of Bucharest's estimated 6,500 homeless children last year on the BBC while he was in working in Iceland. He also learned of the efforts that one American couple, Ron and Sue Bates, have made to help these street kids who are forced to live in the underground sewers. The Bates' saw photos of the Romanian street children on television right after the revolution and decided that they had to do something. They sold their house in Texas, moved to Bucharest to work full time trying to improve the situation and have no intention of returning home. They have already established two orphanages and are currently attempting to battle the problem on a larger social and political level. When Cassidy found out that he would be accompanying a class of Penn students to Bucharest on behalf of Annenberg to shoot the Women's Campaign International, he contacted Sue Bates over e-mail and arranged to meet her. On March 13, Cassidy invited the group of Penn students in the Fels Center of Government/Women's Studies course attending the conference to accompany Sue Bates -- affectionately called "Mama Sue"-- in visiting the street children. The group visited "The Four Star Canal," which is where a group of about 12 kids have moved away from Central Station to live on their own. About two kilometers away, they live in a storm sewer at the Brancoveanu subway stop, in the parking lot of a McDonald's. Cassidy described the Four Star as unique from the mobs of children at the Central Station in that they have formed a pseudo family unit, in which everybody has a place, looks out for each other and shares food and clothes. Braun commented on the striking "dichotomy" she encountered. She found it striking that despite the foul stench of dripping water and bodies crammed together in such tight, damp quarters, all of the beds were made, the dishes were all put away and everything was clean and organized. "While we're sitting on their beds Etty [Jehn] is telling them about how ethnographic anthropologists... learn about people by visiting them and living with them," Cassidy said in his journal of the trip to Bucharest, which he has made available online. When they returned to campus, the group decided that the best thing they could to get involved would be to engage in a long term campaign of support for the efforts that Ron and Sue Bates are making.

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