Giving New Home and New Hope

Gabriela with her daughter and son in their new Habitat home.

Some of the volunteers that came to help Habitat make another dream come true.

“We had tried our luck abroad, but it was at home that we finally found the help we needed to have our own home,” says Gabriela Petecuţă, a simple Romanian woman who recently moved with her family into a new Habitat house.

Gabriela’s story is typical of many Romanians who live in overcrowded and badly suited homes. When she got married, she moved with her husband to her parents’ house in Buda, a small village in Romania. Everyday they commuted to Moineşti where both had jobs. However, the couple did not mind it as they worked towards the same dream - to have their own house.

In 1995, when their daughter, Roxana, was born, the tiny 12-square-meter room in the parents’ house became too small for the three. The family moved into another apartment. However, living conditions there were horrible: no kitchen and communal bathrooms out of use for years. The couple had a single electric heater to fight cold winters, and the place smelled of mold because of the dampness.

The family worked hard but could not save enough to realize their dream. Finally, they decided to go for seasonal work to Italy, leaving the little daughter with the grandparents. However, at that time Gabriela found out that she was pregnant. The joy soon turned into worry as they couldn’t find an adequate home, with a kitchen, proper bathroom, and heating to keep the rooms warm in winter.

When they lost all hope, a friend told them about Habitat for Humanity. The news that they were selected as future homeowners, and there are volunteers who can offer a helping ‘hand up’ brought tears to Gabriela’s eyes. “We didn’t believe that we would be selected. We had been rejected so often in life wherever we had turned for help that we expected the same here…”she recalls.

After months of work and with the help of volunteers, the Petecuţă family finally moved into their new home. Gabriela remembers, “It was the greatest moment of my life, equal only to those when my children were born. We have everything that a mother wants for her children. I wish I could thank everyone that helped us to fulfill our dream face to face.”

Their old home is only a few hundred meters away from the place of the new Habitat one, but the new life is a world apart. Now, when you walk into the Petecuţă’s family new home, you are met with joy and love.

“Words don’t exist to describe the joy we have living here. We have finally escaped from the terrible place where we used to live, from that terrible mold that put our health at risk every day,” remarks Gabriela. Four and a half months ago the Petecuţă family became larger, with the arrival of their baby son Stefan.