Thank you so much for your support of Nightingales in 2020. It has not been the year that

Nightingales had expected, or that most of the world had expected. We have had to think on our feet, change plans, develop new ways of working with our beneficiaries so that both they and we are safe. One of the biggest losses was not being able to have groups of volunteers at the charity, this year. Our beneficiaries and many people in the town missed being involved in the activities which we run especially during the summertime.

This year has at times has been a struggle, but it has also been amazing to see how so many people supported Nightingales during this time. We managed to raise the money to fit a central heating system into the house for our differently abled adults, we ran a successful online charity auction in partnership with Dauntsey’s School, and many people have started supporting the charity through our online shop. This outpouring of generosity has been quite emotional for the charity, seeing people who have been affected by the global pandemic and still wanting to support the young people at Nightingales. This has allowed us to create conditions where the girls can have supported access to school online at Nightingales. Romanian schools have been almost entirely online since March. We have been able to deliver food parcels weekly to families badly affected by the pandemic. We have also been able to continue to pay our three members of staff who have worked tirelessly through the pandemic, with our differently abled young adults, who have struggled at times to understand why their lives and daily programme has changed.

Thank you so much for your support in 2020, if you would like to continue to support Nightingales and keep up to date on the beneficiaries and activities we are running here in Romania; please follow us on social media on Instagram @nightingales_romania and Twitter, @NightingalesRom. We are also looking for people to become friends of Nightingales and we are hoping in 2021, to add 50 new friends to Nightingales. Being a friend of Nightingales, (explained more in another post) means you sign up to donate a minimum of £5 a month to Nightingales, this then allows us to make sure that we can continue to provide the care for our beneficiaries even in the face of years such as 2020, when times are very uncertain for all of us.