Welcome to SHARE 

SHARE supports young people leaving institutional care in Romania, helping with housing, education, health, and social work during the transition out of care.

Who we are?

SHARE is a small charity working directly with young people and the local communities around them, not from a distance.

What we stand for?

Every young person deserves a real chance at an independent life, whatever start they had. That means practical support: somewhere safe to live, an education that leads somewhere, and access to health and social care during a difficult transition.

Our aims

• Safe, stable housing for young people leaving institutional care
• Support with education and training
• Access to health and social care
• Long-term relationships with the people and communities we work alongside

Our story

SHARE began in 1990, when founder Mandy Hughes travelled to Romania as part of one of the first medical teams to visit after the revolution. What she found, thousands of children abandoned into state care, mostly due to poverty, disability, or lack of support for families, led her and her husband Steve to move to Romania the following year to help.

Over the next decade, working alongside Romanian doctors, nurses, teachers, and church communities, SHARE’s early work focused on keeping families together and preventing child abandonment in the first place, through health education, antenatal care, and support for families under strain.

When Romania joined the EU in 2007, funding for this work largely disappeared. SHARE regrouped around a smaller number of long-term projects, including Jim’s House, home to three young adults who grew up in institutional care and, thanks to a legacy gift from the late Rev Canon Jim Tysoe, now have a stable, independent home of their own.

More than three decades on, SHARE’s focus remains the same: standing alongside people the system has too often failed, for the long haul, not just the crisis moment.