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Anyone passing near penitentiary no. 16 in Chișinău last Monday morning might have been surprised by the sound of laughing children. But even prison bars could not keep away the celebrations of the International Day of Families implemented by RCTV Memoria in partnership with the Department of Penitentiary Institutions.

A young boy struggling to hide his tears as he runs to embrace his mother is a painful reminder of how many children are separated from their parents because the latter are detained, while others effectively grow up during the first years of their lives inside a prison in order to stay with their mothers. The psycho-social needs of detainees and their families, equal to those of any other person, are not sufficiently fulfilled by the workings of the prison system in Moldova.

So, on that morning, the guards, the bleak buildings, the longing and the fences fade into the background and gave way for colours, balloons, music, candies, clowns and, most importantly, for family moments and memories. Penitentiary staff and outside visitors became spectators; the prison courtyard with its trees looked like any other courtyard in the city; for brief moments, children were just children, parents were just parents, together they were like any other families, and clowns meant everything.

This activity was implemented as part of the project “Joint efforts for better access to psycho-social and medical services in Moldova prisons” implemented by RCTV Memoria in partnership with the Penitentiaries Department, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

by Margarida Hourmat,

EVS volunteer at RCTV Memoria