Firstly I must apologise for my non-existent blogging during the California dreaming bike ride! My excuse is mainly that I was far too tired every evening and falling asleep as soon as I got to bed but also I can put blame on some patchy internet!

It was a truly a fantastic ride and all the riders did amazingly well, at the moment Cry in the Dark riders have raised around £20,000 which we are thrilled about – and there’s still money coming in.

The next California Dreaming bike ride will be in 2017 if your interested drop me an email please at steve@cryinthedark.org

Now both Beth and I are in Romania and over the last two weeks we have had two groups from Manor CE Academy York with us. Each group was made up of 14 – 15 young people from Year Ten. The first group were escorted by Pat Tasker, and Carol Rowbotham and her daughter Georgie. During the week we completed two paths and a concrete bridge across a drainage ditch outside the house, this means the family can now bring little Mihaela in her wheel chair out into the street etc. This will make access also easier for our nurses too!
Well done guys.

Week two was led by Mr Andy Crisp and Elaine Stevens and Mr Crisps daughter Beth. This team also worked so hard and we finished a 30 metre path for a family on our palliative care program. The son Adrian has been diagnosed with an inoperable tumour and the path will make access now and in future easier for everyone in the family and for our community palliative care team. The team was also involved in running activities at Casa Lumina and at the Hospice Casa Albert Day centre which they did brilliantly.

On Friday the 3rd July we launched our new Hospice project here in Bacau it will be a 14 bedded in patient unit dedicated for paediatric palliative care and terminal respite. It will be located in the city of Bacau with land donated by the city mayors office, it will be built and run over the next three years using money that we have won form the Velux foundations. No doubt more news will follow as this project develops!

It’s now Friday the 10th July and we have had our 2 micro gap students with us for 3 days – Fridays are the outside work project days so they are getting ready to get stuck in to their summer project, Should be fun!

Next week sees the start of our first ever patients seaside holiday! We are taking 15 children and young people from our Hospice programme to Eforie Sud on the Black Sea. Most of the children have never been to the seaside before! This has been made possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters in the U.K who have sponsored the children, we also have 4 intrepid volunteers joining us from the U.K especially for the Holiday known to our supporters as Voliday!

Well I’m signing off for a while as I have asked our two Micro Gappers to do a weekly blog whilst here with us in Romania so we look forward to reading all about their time and perspective whilst with us until September.

If whilst reading our blog you have become interested in joining us in 2017 for the next California Dreaming bike ride or next year for Micro Gap or the Voliday or feel you can help in some other way please contact us at Info@cryinthedark.org.

Thank you.

Hope you all have a great summer and thank you for taking time to read this!

Blessings Steve.

Steve Cooper CEO/Founder. Cry in the Dark