Enough Love to Go Around

Months after returning from a volunteering trip to a Romanian orphanage, Pat Donahue (PhD ‘81) still tears up when she thinks about Georgiana, a little girl with whom she became particularly close.

“I just fell in love with this precious little girl and didn’t want to leave her,” Donahue said, looking at photos of the brown-eyed toddler who often carried a teddy bear. “We all got very, very attached to these children.”

Donahue, a professor and executive associate dean for academic affairs at The University of Iowa College of Nursing, was among 12 Americans and three Canadians who visited Romania for three weeks in May 2005. She signed up through the University of Iowa Alumni Association’s Iowa Voyagers program. The trip was organized by the Global Volunteers program, a national organization that has sent some 67 groups of volunteers to the Romanian orphanage.

“It was a phenomenal experience,” Donahue said, pictured left above. “It just gives you a whole new perspective on different advantages, lives, and cultures.”

The volunteers chose between working on English-speaking skills with middle school students or with babies labeled as “failure to thrive” at an orphanage in Tutova. All but two chose to work at the orphanage.

The orphanage was home to some 38 babies up to age three. They were divided into four rooms during the day according to age and developmental level where the volunteers cared for them. After the volunteers left for the day, the children were placed in rooms lined with cribs.

“These are children who are essentially dropped off at this clinic, primarily because their parents don’t have the means to take care of them,”

Donahue said. “Parents are permitted to visit them, but most don’t.”
Donahue said the orphanage is severely understaffed when volunteers are not present and relies on Global Volunteers to provide care and even basic necessities such as diapers and baby food. The group Donahue traveled with brought basic items, as well as a collection of University of Iowa clothing for the babies and an Iowa flag that now hangs on the wall.

While they were there, the group purchased stereos for each of the four rooms and CD’s of Romanian folk music and children’s songs. They also paid for an exterminator to take care of ants and mosquitoes that bit the children when they took them outside to a playground another volunteer group had donated.

But the main thing the volunteers provided for the babies was love.

“They need human touch, human caring, and love,” Donahue said. “You sing to them, hug them, and invariably they’re just crawling all over you because they want closeness so much.”

Donahue said it was heartbreaking to see that a lack of stimulation led to slowed mental and physical development for many of the children. Georgiana, for example, was nearly two years old but not talking.

Diane Baker (BA ‘76/MA ’87), director of Iowa Voyagers, said the Romania trip, which is scheduled to take place again in May 2006, will likely become an annual event.

“It’s a great way to spread the good will of Iowa,” she said.
Donahue said that she and some of the other members of her group had such a powerful experience in Romania that they’ve kept in touch and plan to go back.

Linda Baker (BA ’68), a library assistant in Golden, Colorado, pictured above right, was among the volunteers who traveled with Donahue and plans to return. She said she went on the trip as a way to give thanks for the blessings she’s had in life.

“It’s really important for people to realize we’re all citizens of the world,” Baker said. “That really sums up why I went.” –by Heather Spangler