When Katya* was found by local schoolteacher Eva, she was filthy and infested with lice, living without parents in a small village house. She had not bathed in several weeks and was traumatised after her alcoholic mother abandoned her, and her older brother was killed by a car.

It’s children like Katya, alone and vulnerable, that are easy targets for human traffickers. Official statistics estimate there are 25,000 Moldovan victims of human trafficking, and 40% of them are children.

Katya shows Crossroads staff the squalid conditions of the home in which she lived with her brother before being fostered.

Thankfully for Katya, Eva and her husband couldn’t bear to leave the little girl alone in the village, and brought her into their own home as a foster daughter. Today, Katya is a bright, well-dressed, articulate teenager, who loves her foster parents. The family, though, still struggles to make ends meet in a place that has been classified as Europe’s poorest nation.

Crossroads partnered with an NGO in the region to help foster families like Katya’s, shipping a container of goods that would help relieve the pressure of poverty. Today, Katya is happy, healthy and thriving in her foster family.

We shipped toys, stationery, household goods for foster families, and a large quantity of educational items that they are now using in their support centres. Families living in poverty, who may be tempted to give up their children to state-run institutions, are given the care, support and respite they need to keep their children within the family home.

*Not her real name