About Us

What We Do:

Open Doors is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works to help families in desperate situations in Eastern Europe. Currently we have projects working with impoverished families in Romania and refugee families from Ukraine.

Where We Work:

We help families from Ukraine upon arrival in the United States. Our projects in Romania are based in the town of Bistriţa, located in the northern part of the country.

Our Story:

Open Doors was founded in December 2003 by a group of Princeton University students and members of the local community who were concerned about the plight of abandoned children in Romanian orphanages. Realizing that abandonment was a societal problem that could not be solved merely by working with the children in institutions, we created community programs to provide support to families and TO help prevent child abandonment. In 2023, we expanded our work to meet the needs of refugee families from Ukraine arriving in the United States.

Projects:

■ Ukrainian Refugee Support: Ukrainian families are seriously impacted by the war in their country. They face constant fear of attacks, displacement, air raids, and power outages. Many families, particularly those with children, are seeking refuge in the United States during this difficult time. Families arrive with limited belongings, few resources, and little knowledge of how to establish themselves in this country. Our program offers support to refugee families during their transition to the United States. We provide temporary housing, assistance finding employment and setting up benefits, translation help, transportation, furniture, clothing, food, and funds for other needs, such as classes to improve English language skills.

■ Romanian Community Center: Many of the families in poor areas are crowded into old, dirty one room apartments, sometimes with no running water. Parents tend to be poorly educated and have little opportunity of employment. Children often fail to attend school regularly and almost never complete their homework. It is not uncommon to find teenagers who do not know how to read and have dropped out of school. Even those children who attend school face large classes with little individual attention and exasperated teachers. Our Community Center was established to provide a safe place for children and their families, including afternoon homework help, meals, vitamins, showers, soap, and lice shampoo, school supplies, clothing for school, morning daycare, and parenting classes.

■ Sponsored Foster Homes: offering a foster home for hard-to-place abandoned children in Romania.