“I miss them so much, but I try not to cry now I’m big. Mom and dad send money home to aunty. Here, we’ve got all we need. A bit of the money is all for me, but I’m trying to save up to buy mom a present. She’ll come home, one day. She calls me every night and I tell her everything. She sends me sweets and sticker albums of Italian footballers. If I could, I’d change everything, but the only thing to do is wait.”
Left behind with his aunt at 10 years old, by his parents who emigrated to Italy, these are the words of a boy who has had to grow up far too fast.
The first victims of migration are children. In Eastern Europe half of those who emigrate are women who, in most cases, leave their children at home, entrusting them, at best, to grandparents, or to elderly neighbors, or at worst, and too often, just abandoning them to fend for themselves.
A prime example is Moldova, which, by some current estimates, has lost about 7 hundred thousand migrants, though other astonishing estimates have put the figure at over 1 million, almost a quarter of the total population. In economic terms, migrant remittance, or sending money home, helps to strengthen the financial inflow of a developing country, but it also increases the number of social orphans, children who might count themselves lucky to see their parents but once a year.
The plight of these children is difficult to imagine. Many will never overcome the psychological trauma caused by separation from their parents. Numerous cases of suicide do nothing but highlight how serious the situation is.
According to the Information and
Documentation Center on Child Rights in Moldova, the number of children without parental care is growing steadily. In 2006, there were 94,000 children who had at least one emigrant parent, while in 2009, the number had reached 135,000
.
LEFT BEHIND PROJECT 
Where in Moldova have you seen this concentrated the most? Or, where there are more children totally left on their own?