Hope and Homes for Children is a registered charity working in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa. Find out more about how it all began.

The History of Hope and Homes for Children

In 1994 a retired British UN Commander, Mark Cook, and his wife Caroline visited the Bjelave children’s home in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Mark had previously served as the Commander of the British Contingent of the UN Protection Force in the country and knew of the devastating consequences of the cities long running siege. But it was reading Michael Nicholson’s (ITN Correspondent) account of the state run orphanage that drove the couple to find out what had happened to the children living there.

The orphanage, home to some 120 children, had been badly damaged by constant shelling. There was no glass in the windows and no running water or electricity and very little food. It was freezing cold in the winter and the children were crammed into one room, kept warm by a single flame from a gas pipe.

One correspondent from The Times described it as "the worst place in Sarajevo aside from the morgue." These children who had already suffered the ordeal of being orphaned or abandoned were now living in poverty, fear and misery, and had little hope for a happier future.

Unable to walk away and leave these children to their fate, Mark and Caroline decided to start up a charity to support vulnerable children and so Hope and Homes for Children began.

Our early work focused on improving the immediate conditions of children in state institutions: rebuilding war torn buildings; investing in equipment and facilities and sending out qualified childcare and social work volunteers to provide additional care and train existing staff in the provision of childcare. However, we soon realised that to really improve the lives and futures of these children we would need to be a lot more radical in our approach.

Even the best institutions are unable to offer the individual care, attention and stimulation a child needs in order to develop properly and it is a fact that children simply do not thrive in this environment. It is not unusual to go into an institution and find children rocking back and forth, self-harming or unable to walk, stand or even talk at the age of four. Furthermore, the memories of institutionalisation stay with an individual for life and can have very negative effects on their future.

We came to realise that it is within the security and stability of a home and the comfort and support of a caring family environment that a child will truly flourish. Every child has the right to grow up in a family, to be cared for and protected from harm or abuse: not only is this a right, it is a basic human need. And so we developed from re-building orphanages to closing them down – moving those children into caring families.

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