UniCredit Leasing Romania recently teamed up with the Ronald McDonald Foundation for Children to build a home away from home in Iași, eastern Moldova that provides comfort, support and resources to families who travel far from home for the medical care their child needs.

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Like everywhere in the world, families without sufficient means, living in rural environments often face serious problems when a child becomes ill. Logistically, the child needs to be transferred to a big city, where they can receive treatment, maybe surgery, and not infrequently, need to stay there for a while to be cared for. Under these circumstances, families on low incomes struggle to afford accommodation in big cities to stay close to their child and pay expensive doctors’ fees.  

For this reason, the Ronald McDonald Foundation for Children was set up to help children with medical conditions get the care they need by providing special houses, where they can get treatment and where they can convalesce comfortably with their families by their side.

“We wholeheartedly support the Ronald McDonald House project in Iasi, an outstanding initiative that supports children and their families and which addresses the needs of the local community. After the successful implementation of the project in Bucharest and Timisoara, we are happy to contribute to its development in the eastern part of the country. We are sure that the project will have an extremely positive impact and will bring benefits to the community and families in the Moldova region", said Daniela Bodîrcă, CEO of UniCredit Leasing.

Construction on the 19 roomed house will begin this June in the courtyard of the Emergency Clinical Hospital for Children "Sfânta Maria", situated on a hill. UniCredit Leasing Romania’s contribution will be utilised to consolidate and stabilise the slope, as well as for the resistance structure of the building.

Priority will be given to parents from outside the locality and nursing mothers. It is estimated that support activities will benefit:

  • 500-600 children annually, whose parents will live in the house;
  • more than 1,000 children hospitalised;
  • if the pandemic allows, the house can offer its common areas (living room, dining room, office, laundry, etc.) and meal programmes and activities, including the Day Use Programme for boarding families who are not accommodated there.

However, this is not the only project where UniCredit successfully collaborated with the Ronald McDonald foundation. As part of UniCredit’s Social Impact Banking programme, UniCredit Bank Austria is collaborating with Ronald McDonald House Charities to build a new ‘children’s house’ in Salzburg. The house will contain a total of 15 flats, which will be made available to over 300 families each year from 2021 onwards. You can read more here

In addition, UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia supported building the Ronald McDonald House at Motol hospital, where families can stay free of charge. The Prague Ronald McDonald House will be the first one in Czech Republic and will offer 21 comfort rooms and  fully equipped common areas, such as: a kitchen, dining room, work/study room, living room, playroom, and laundry.

These are all big projects, with tangible results of which we are very proud!