The Cause: Bridge of Love

The cause I would feel privileged to involve myself with is the Bridge of Love. A non-profit organization created to help the orphans and foster children in Romania. I'm going to share what the Bridge of Love is and what they do just by taking straight from their website:

Our Story
Bridge of Love was created in 2001 by Scott and Laurie Lundberg, of Taylorsville, Utah. The Lundbergs and their children traveled to Romania to visit an orphanage during their Christmas holiday in 1999. There they saw a situation they could never forget. Babies and toddlers stayed in their cribs nearly all day, starved for love and attention. The bedroom walls were bare, and a cold breeze seeped through the windows of the poorly heated orphanage/hospital.

There were no blankets or toys in the room, and the workers changed the babies’ diapers in silence. The toddlers rocked their little bodies back and forth for hours, the only stimulation they could create. The older toddlers banged their heads on the side of the crib—over and over—creating a new noise and huge lumps on their heads.

Laurie described the situation as “children living in a zoo.” They each had their own cage from which they couldn’t escape. Most of the children had been abandoned at birth, with little or no information about them left behind. There were no plans for these children—they just existed. Nobody was their voice.

The Lundberg family quickly became attached to the thirty-two children in the orphanage. They determined to do everything possible to save as many of the children as they could. They persisted when told there was nothing that could be done for these children. They knew that each child was important and worthy of love.

Bridge of Love has spent the past ten years saving these abandoned and orphaned children. The foundation began its mission by working to find loving homes for the children and helping to place them, one child at a time, in foster care with Romanian families.

Currently, there are nearly 40 children in foster care who receive support from Bridge of Love, plus a group of six older teens and young adults who were abandoned as children. This is in partnership with a sister foundation in Barlad, Romania called Podul Dragostei, which is Romanian for “Bridge of Love.”

More recently, Bridge of Love has partnered with other nonprofit organizations in Romania to help even more children and families in need. These currently include a maternity center for young mothers and their babies as well as an amazing organization called The Heart of a Child Foundation, both located in Galati, Romania.

Here is a video describing a bit more about what the Bridge of Love is.