Granny Anastasia is part of the Adopt a granny project since 2008. She has one daughter whom the granny visits but the daughter receives the minimum salary on economy and so she can’t help her mother financially. The granny lives in Cluj Napoca town in a 18 square meters apartment. The bathroom used to be on the common corridor but the owner of the flats sold the space of the bathroom promising that he would build another one. He didn’t, so the granny had to make modifications in her room to make a bathroom. The granny’s pension is 81 euro.
Anastasia suffers with hearing problem since 2003 when she became deaf because she was hit by a drunk neighbour who was angry at her because she turned on the light on the main corridor, so he hit her so badly, that her ear-drum broke. Since then she can’t hear. She bought an aid hearing but still she cannot hear. This fact influences her social connections; she can’t talk on the phone anymore with her friends, with her brother who lives in another city. It is very hard for her to do simple things like paying something, to do her shopping because she doesn’t hear what they are asking her. Her brother and daughter complain that they have to speak with her very laud from one meter distance and this is sometimes tiring for them.
Since she is in the project she has been helped with food parcels and different items she needed. Also as a benefit of the project, there are organized weekly granny meetings where grannies have the opportunity to socialize, to open up, to talk about their problems and to feel that they are not alone. As she says, the only happiness for Anastasia is that she can participate at the weekly meetings but sometimes she starts to cry on it, because she can’t hear what the group leader says to her. Unfortunately her feeling is oftentimes that everyone is laughing at her because they have to repeat for several times what they are saying in order for her to understand. But within the group meetings she is cared for and accepted and it is a chance for her to learn to cooperate with people around her despite of her hearing problem.
Other benefits from the project, highly appreciated by the granny, are the trips organized for grannies together with Roma children from the Child Development project. Grannies from the project who have no chances to go by themselves on trips have the opportunity to socialize and to enjoy these kind of events. For granny Anastasia these are special events which bring joy to her lonely heart.
Her hearing problems influence her whole life in a very bad way; as a person with hearing problem, the state offer her no facility; she receives compensation to the medicine costs because her pension is low and not because of her hearing disability.
With the project support and within the activities organized she has a chance to socialize and to look for strength to go on despite of her disability.